Let’s dip into the DAT collection for today’s On This Date in History! I got this one in a trade with someone overseas and they broadcast this on the radio over there, bad words and all.
The guitar is a bit low in the mix to start and the mix changes quite a bit throughout, so not a good one to rebalance. It’s enjoyable.
Recorded by: ? (probably one of my Italian trading friends back in the 90s)
Transfer by: Shayne Stacy
Equipment used: Sony PCM-R500 and M-Audio Audiophile 2496 card
As promised in my facebook post yesterday, here is the first of TWO daily posts. I will be posting an “on this day in history” daily for the next year, at least. The archive has focused mainly on punk/metal/alternative, but there is a ton of other stuff here including folk/county/americana.
I traded for this one from a guy in Italy (sorry, I don’t remember his name, I should have kept my traders’ tape lists) back in the mid 90s and it sounded fantastic. For those folks who don’t know what a DAT is- they were Digital Audio Tapes.These were the highest quality and most compact way to trade music before CDR’s took over. It was the original digital listening platform, albeit expensive and used by tapers & audio enthusiasts. Anyway, I was enjoying this Hancock quite a bit while transferring it, and then the dreaded DAT diginoise hits at about 70 minutes in. If you have never heard it, it’s super annoying- staticky robot fart sounding.
I was going to ditch this one and find another tape to post for this date, but I realized that this proved my point- that we need to get this stuff digitzed ASAP. These DATs are 30-35 years old and cassettes can be 40 years old at this point. Hopefully I can do this full-time someday soon and really speed things up!
Recorded by: I can’t remember
Transferred by: Shayne Stacy
Equipment used: DAT to WAV transfer: Sony PCM-R500 — Audiophile 2496 card — WAV
Transfer Lineage: DAT Soundboard Master – My DAT – You
I was looking for some new/old videos to post on the weekends, so I went through a stack of VHS tapes that I received in trades in the early 90s. I went through 1 stack OF 15 tapes and found a bunch of cool uncirculated stuff.
I got this one in trade from Gary Shurtleff back in early 94. He would get PAL masters of concerts that were broadcast on Italian TV mailed to him, and he would use a worldwide multiformat VCR to copy them over to NTSC for all of us. This was a HUGE deal back then- those VCRs cost about $1k at the time. Thanks Gary!
I am kinda floored that this is not on youtube. Has it really been uncirculated for 30 years? That’s nuts. Great Louris/Olson Jayhawks set.
Recorded by: ?
Transfer by: Shayne Stacy
Equipment used: Panasonic AG-1980 — Datavideo TBC1000 – Tevion USB Adapter — Virtualdub
Enhanced in Adobe Premiere Elements/Neat Video (denoise)
I traded DATs and VHS tapes with a couple of people in Italy, but I didn’t keep their tape lists so I can’t recall their names. One of my old trading friends taped this show on cassette and bounced it to DAT to send to me.
The mix was a bit thin on everything except for vocals, so I did some work in Izotope to get it to sound a bit better.
There were shows at the Beastial Market in the early 90s, but no good images of the venue or flyers from the events there.
Recorded by: My friend in Italy
Transfer by: Shayne Stacy
Equipment used: Sony PCM-R500 and M-Audio Audiophile 2496 card
Rebalance in Izotope Rx8: Bass +12, Drums +4, Guitar +9.
It has been quite a while since I have posted anything from the mighty Thin White Rope. I loved this band and still miss them, even though they have been broken up for almost 33 years now. I still have about 100 TWR shows on cassette and DAT to work through, so don’t be surprised if there are more of these throughout the year.
It seemed that Europe was always very big on TWR. This tape alone has a radio broadcast of the band (here), plus them playing live on RAI-TV 3 days prior to this. In the USA, TWR was on the radio… once I thnk (Spin radio concert) and on TV… once I think (Sacramento Sammies). They do both in 3 days in Italy. The flipside of the tape has another radio broadcast from Sweden. Well done. The announcer does need to be quiet at the start of Red Sun, but otherwise good.
There was no photographic evidence of this show, so the pic is from the night before, at KGB club, Naples Italy May 28, 1988.
Recorded by: ?
Transfer by: Shayne Stacy
Equipment used: Nakamichi Dragon and M-Audio Audiophile 2496 card
It’s video weekend! Back in the late 80s/early 90s, I (and a lot of my friends) used to trade a lot overseas. It was a challenge trading videotapes with Europe since they used a different VHS video format and worldwide VCRs were $1000. In addition, a lot of bootlegs were being manufactured and distributed out of Italy- it was the hub of bootlegs. This was before email so you never really got to know your trading friend like you do today. It was like mailing tapes into a big black hole and hoping they would come back. Sometimes, they didn’t come back and you would hear stories about people being busted and their collections being bulldozed- that’s what I heard about this Italian trader. Luckily, I was never sucked into that whole legal aspect of things, probably because I never sold tapes…. or maybe it was dumb luck.
Anyway, here is one from the Italian trader whose name I have forgotten. It is an hour-long set of Alex Chilton from Italy in 1988. Sounds great for a video from back then. Picture is decent.
Recorded by: ?
Transfer by: Shayne Stacy
Equipment used: JVC HRS9800 and Canopus ADVC300. I think I might have used TBC.
Here’s one for today’s On This Date in History that sounded ok, but I figured I could make it sound GREAT in Izotope. Hm.. Not really. The original mix of this has guitar buried in the mix, so I tried to boost in Izotope. That did bring the guitar up a bit, but it also brought up the bass which is already too loud in the mix. After I did that, I realized that Joe was too low in the mix from about 30min-on. In the end, I am not sure if this is any better than the raw board tape. Oh well. I tried.
Recorded by: ?
Transfer by: Shayne Stacy
Equipment used: Nakamichi Dragon and M-Audio Audiophile 2496 card
Rebalance in Izotope Rx8: Guitar +7, Drums +3
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