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The Beatles
Northwest Nights

Album 2000 on DarthDisc label
Rock

The Vancouver bootleg has long been one of my favorites, not because the concert itself was especially good - it wasn't, and the audience's zeal led the group to curtail its set. Still, the boot of the August 22, 1964 Vancouver show offered something that straight concert recordings don't: A view of a Beatles appearance several perspectives. In addition to the concert, recorded by a local radio station and played straight, there is a second version of the concert with descriptive commentary from one of the station's reporters. And in addition to the pre-show press conference, there is a lengthy and amusing segment recorded in the pressroom as the press awaited the group. This CD edition was made from the tape that had been the source of the original LP set. But there are some differences. The original bootleggers had dome some minor re-ordering in the pressroom section. Rather than duplicate their edits, I let the tape play as it is. It was also necessary to correct some serious volume fluctuation on one channel during the concert. The easiest solution would have been to simply use the other channel (it's a mono tape after all), but for various technical and philosophical reasons I didn't want to do that. Instead, with the magic of computer technology - and working at times almost frame by frame - I restored the levels on the faulty channel. In the interests of full disclosure, I admit to one touch of cosmetic fakery. On the tape - as on the LP - there is a one-syllable dropout in "Things We Said Today." It occurs at the end of the phrase "And that's enough," the second time McCartney sings it. The choice was to let the dropout stand, or fix it by dropping in a copy of the syllable ("nough") from McCartney's first pass at it. I chose the latter. The edit did not disturb any of the existing material. Because the original double LP was too long to fit on a single CD, I gathered the available recordings from the Beatles' visit to Seattle the previous day, August 21 - Airport interviews, the press conference, and the complete concert (the last three songs of which were missing from the Spank edition). Unlike the Vancouver recording, the Seattle concert is an audience tape and decidedly MID-FI. Still, the addition of this material gives us a documentary of two days in the group's 1964 North American Tour - the days, in fact, that led up to the Hollywood Bowl performance on August 23rd, which was also recorded. Neo, Summer 2000

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