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Curtis Ensler's Collection

Robert Fripp   12/02/1978

Irving Plaza, New York, NY
Media CDR   1 disc
J-Card Comment Robert Fripp and Walter Stedding - December 02, 1978

Robert Fripp, Debby Harry, Chris Stein, Walter Steding
Dec 2nd 1978
Irving Plaza (I think)

Six Tracks.
Total Time 46:37
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*** RESEED ***
I got this on DIME a while back but lost the original files so am upping with one generation of extraction / recompression, sorry.
I've boosted the volume
See the bottom for lineage
This is fantastic. Fripp has never sounded so raw
You gotta hear it to believe it
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I've been going crazy trying to figure out the story behind this tape. Ebubier posted a copy of it and since I was the guy who taped it, I'll post this upgrade. This was probably at Irving Plaza, the date was definitely Dec 2 1978. Well, part of it was late enough to actually be Dec 3rd - 2am or later, but that isn't how these things are done. As you can likely hear, we were in no condition to know what time it was. A word to the up and coming tapers: Don't take quaaludes and get caught on tape.

Some sites (and my tape) say the location was Club 57 but the promoters of Club 57 sometimes held the actual shows at Irving Plaza. My database says Irving Plaza. I think that is the case here.

I thought that it was either a Fripp show or a Blondie show, and that the other showed up to play, but I don't have tapes of those gigs and I would if that was the case. But having dug through the database, I do have a B52s show from that date at Irving Plaza. I think what happened was that the opening band was Fripp, Steding, Harry, and Stein. Having noticed that Ms. Harry was playing drums, I turned the tape on. And so, the first three tracks are from FHSS opening for the B52's.

I was getting ready to upload this and then noticed that there was another entry for Fripp from this date, and that turned out to be really funny. We had heard that Fripp was going to play, and I don't think that we noticed that he was playing as the opening act. We were very stoned. So, after the show ended and most folks had left, we were standing around waiting to see if anything was going to happen. The PA had already been turned off.

So, there we were, a small crowd of folks standing right in front of the stage, and Fripp comes out. Near the beginning of track-4, listen carefully and you'll hear Fripp ask for a barstool. And I'm the guy who says "Barstool for Mr. Fripp". So tracks 4-6 are Fripp "late" show.

I burned it with a two second pause at the start of track-4 since it really is a different part of the show, perhaps you should do the same.

I'm not going to include an interesting photo of this crew that I just pulled off the web because it's copywrited and I don't want DAD to get in trouble for that. If you want to have a look, go here:

http://lightbox.retna.com/retna/mres...s/ppage35.html


Enjoy the gig. The quality is really pretty good. Very good for the "late" show. I'd bet that it was taped on a little Sony TC55 not ten feet from Fripp on his barstool.


dgk
Trades Allowed Yes
Owned by Curtis Ensler · Last Updated May 23, 2023