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Mike Langen's Collection

Dave Matthews Band   07/17/1994

Backstage Tavern, Ballard, WA
Source sbrd
Media cdr   2 discs
Notes Dave Matthews Band
RCA Records Promo Party
The Backstage, Seattle, WA
1994-07-17

Soundboard > Denon DTR-80P DAT at 48kHz

Soundcheck:
1 Recently
2 The Song That Jane Likes
3 One Sweet World


Show:

4 One Sweet World

5 Warehouse

6 The Song That Jane Likes

7 Dancing Nancies

8 Pay For What You Get

9 Lie in our Graves


1 Jimi Thing >
Seek Up

2 Tripping Billies

3 All Along The Watchtower

4 Satellite

5 Ants Marching

6 Encore: (without Boyd)
7 I'll Back You Up

8 Recently


Remastered 2007-04-01 by the original recordist
Original master transfer to WAV
24-bit processing in Sound Forge 8.0:
Resampled to 44.1kHz
Fixed glitch
Adjusted volume in 1st part of "One Sweet World"
Waves L1+ Ultramaximizer (limiting, noise shaping, dither)
************************************************************************Archival notes:

This is a fresh transfer from the original master DAT.

Other archivists have described the other copies in circulation as
having distortion, clipping, brickwalling, etc. The original recording
does not have these defects. The only distortion I noticed was at the
board, when the band explodes in the middle of Watchtower.

I have also included the 3-song soundcheck. I do not believe that this
usually circulated, until now.

If anyone has a copy of this historic show, I encourage you to upgrade
to this version.


Transfer process:

This is my standard process, but I thought I would spell it out for once:

- The original DAT was recorded on a Denon DTR-80P DAT at 48kHz.
- This was played back on a Sony PCM-R500 DAT deck through an AES/EBU
digital link into a Lynx One sound card on a PC.
- The file was recorded with, and all editing done in Sony Sound Forge
8.0.
- Removed nearly silent portions between songs in the soundcheck (only).
- Reduced the volume of the first soundcheck song by 3dB.
- During the show, I apparently reduced the levels part way into the first
song of the show. To fix that, I now reduced the volume of the first
song of the show by 6dB, using a graphic fade that faded up at the point
in time at which I had originally reduced the levels.
- Inserted region markers for tracks on 588-sample boundaries. This is
done by setting 75.0 frames per second, and enabling "Auto Snap To Time,
making a selection, and dropping a marker at one edge of the (snapped)
selection.
- The file was converted to 24-bit depth.
- Fixed one pop.
- Resampled to 44.1kHz using the highest quality setting, with anti-alias
filtering but no dither or noise shaping.
- The Waves L1+ Ultramaximizer was then applied, with an 8.8dB threshold.
This process takes the place of normalization. It applied an 8.8dB
volume increase while limiting it, to accommodate the random peak.
The Waves L1+ also includes the Waves IDR which performs the 16-bit
quantization. Settings: "Type 1" dither and "Ultra" noise shaping.
- The file was then truncated to 16-bit, and regions were extracted and
converted to FLAC.


Show notes:

This was the first DMB show west of the Rockies. It was right after RCA
Records signed them. Prior to the deal, DMB had done quite nicely with
their first record, "Remember Two Things" on Bama Rags Records. The new
deal with RCA Records was certain to make them a nationally popular act.

To get things rolling, RCA invited them to play as the entertainment for
an RCA/BMG national meeting that happened to take place in Seattle. RCA
rented out the top club in town, The Backstage (capacity about 450), and
planned to bus the meeting attendees over to the club for a private
party. This show was in between normal tours. There were a few
Virginia transplants and other friends of the band living in Seattle at
the time, so RCA said that they would open the club doors to the general
public at a certain time, part-way through the evening.

A significant portion of the crowd were actually people that I called up
and encouraged to come down. And people that those people called. I
don't recall how exactly things happened, but I'm pretty sure that
everyone who came got in for free and saw the whole show.

To get to the dressing room at The Backstage, you had to go through the
kitchen. The kitchen had one of those doors that swings both ways. The
servers blow in and out through that door all night. Somehow, during
the encore break, Boyd Tinsley got his violin smashed while attempting
to pass through the door while someone was coming in the opposite
direction. That's why he is not on the encore. Boyd was heartbroken.
I remember my friend telling Boyd that he would look back on this some
day and laugh because the success that they were about to experience
would make it trivial to replace the instrument.


Historical perspective:

Looking back on it now, nearly 13 years later, it really was a turning
point for DMB. The popularity really took off with the first RCA
release that followed shortly afterwards. Now DMB routinely sells out
the 18,000 seat Gorge Amphitheater when they play in the Northwest, for
days at a time. I've been told that Dave Matthews eventually settled
down in Seattle.

Trades Allowed Yes
Ratings Sound: A
Owned by Mike Langen · Last Updated May 23, 2023