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Jeff Kaisershot's Collection

Carlos Santana & John McLaughlin   08/26/1973

Saratoga Performing Arts Center, Saratoga Springs, NY
Source Portable Panasonic (mono) cassette recorder with ALC and a built in mike > Memorex cassettes (put into new tape shell housings before transfer) > played into PC for digital transfer, done in the early 2000s using Goldwave...
Media FLAC
J-Card Comment The Santana/McLaughlin "Love Devotion Surrender" tour band:

Devadip Carlos Santana- guitar
Mahavishnu John McLaughlin- guitar
Khalid Rasin (Larry Young)- keyboards
Doug Rauch- bass
Armando Peraza- percussion, vocal in "a love supreme"
Billy Cobham- drums

Saratoga Performing Arts Center
Saratoga, N.Y.
August 26, 1973
(1st show of this great tour)

runtime: 99:07 (minutes/seconds)
setlist:
1: Band introductions (by John McLaughlin) 2:15
2: Meditation > 1:34
3: Flame Sky 15:07
4: A Love Supreme (John Coltrane) 12:43
5: I'm Aware of You 16:47
6: Love, Devotion, Surrender (instrumental) 6:55
7: Taurian matador (spliced) 21:44
8: (encore) let us go into the house of the lord 22:01
lineage:
portable Panasonic (mono) cassette recorder with ALC and a built in mike >
Memorex cassettes (put into new tape shell housings before transfer) >
played into PC for digital transfer, done in the early 2000s using Goldwave to eliminate camera clicks,
long periods of silence, and the occasional cough, as well as to smooth transitions >
(the taper and transferer of this recording has asked not to reveal his name(s), or username)
flac > CD > CD flac files copied to PC > wav (splicing of Taurian matador and some very slight level balancing) >
flac (sb's aligned) > torrentially yours.

notes: this 12 stop tour lasted just over a couple of weeks, finishing up in Honolulu, Hawaii
(which surely must have been a "lulu" of a concert) on September 14, 1973.
It was in support of the album "love, devotion, surrender", and the songs "flame sky" and "LDS"
were from the Santana album "Welcome", not one of his better known albums but a good one anyway.
Michael Shrieve and Don Alias add percussion and drum help (not that Billy Cobham ever needs any percussive help)
on the (LDS) studio album.
this concert was opening night of the tour, their 1st live concert anywhere. The energy is very
intense and fortunately the recording captures it quite well, for the equipment used to make this recording.
this tour was also a tribute to the late John Coltrane, without any kind of a horn player,
including maybe his two greatest classics, "a love supreme" and (in some of the shows) "my favorite things".
the last song is probably not complete, maybe missing a minute or two of the ending but most is there,
likely longer than the previously circulating sbd source.
the whitecoats were coming for this tour. Carlos on the left, John on the right as they appeared onstage.
the title song (track 6 here, love devotion, surrender) was only played a few times, then dropped from the set.
The rest of these songs were played in most of the shows of this short tour.
The Santana/McLaughlin "Love Devotion Surrender" 1973 tour dates were: according to the "santanamigos" website
one show each night unless otherwise noted
SPAC, Saratoga, N.Y. Aug. 26 *
Boston Music Hall Aug. 28 * (listed as 2 shows, but there was just one and it was about 150 min.)
Maple Leaf Garden, Toronto, Ontario (Canada) Aug. 29 *
Cincinnati Gardens, Cincinnati, Ohio Aug. 30
Crisler Auditorium, Univ. of Mich. Ann Arbor, Mich. Aug. 31
International Ampitheater, Chicago, Illinois Sept. 1 *
Civic Center, Santa Monica, Ca. Sept 4 * (was scheduled for an official release, that plan was scrubbed years ago)
Community Center, Berkeley, Ca. Sept. 5 * (2 shows, according to several sources)
Arena, Seattle, Wash. Sept. 7 * one show, about 150 min.
Paramount Theater, Portland, Oregon Sept. 9
Celebrity Theater, Phoenix, Ariz. Sept 12 * (2 shows)
International Center Arena, Honululu, Hi. Sept. 14
(* denotes that a recording circulates, as of this posting)

notes from the source of these 6 recently surfaced vintage John McLaughlin master audience recordings:

Mahavishnu audience recordings 1972 - 1973

A: Mahavishnu Orchestra
1) Williams College, December 3, 1972
2) Vassar College, December 8, 1972
3) Yale University, January 19, 1973
4) SUNY New Paltz, March 17, 1973
5) Lenox Music Inn, July 21, 1973

B: McLaughlin-Santana Band
1) Saratoga, August 26, 1973

Technical notes: These FLAC files were made from the master audience cassettes.
For the Williams, Vassar, Yale, and SUNY, the taper used a portable cassette recorder
with a manual level control and an plug-in mike (no cord).
He was well placed at Vassar and SUNY, less so for Williams, and stuck at the very back
of a noisy crowd for the Yale show. For Lenox and Saratoga, he used a portable Panasonic
cassette recorder with ALC and a built in mike. He was very placed for Lenox and Saratoga.
In each case, he used Memorex cassettes.
The digital transfer was done in the early 2000s using Goldwave to eliminate camera clicks,
long periods of silence, and the occasional cough, as well as to smooth transitions.
Before playing the tapes into his PC, the taper opened the cassette shells and transferred
the tape spools into fresh cassette shells.
The recordings were originally archived on CDR as APE files (a now rarely used lossless compression software).
They were later de-compressed back to WAV and then re-compressed into their current FLAC format.

Venue and date notes: All of these recordings were made at the venues noted on the dates cited.
Wolfgang's Vault is selling soundboard recordings that are allegedly of the Yale and SUNY shows.
Not so. The WV "Yale" and "SUNY" shows are fine gigs but---whatever they are--they are not the Yale and SUNY 1973 shows.
WV has made numerous mistakes in identifying the venues and dates of the recordings it sells and these two are among them.
There are no circulating SBD recordings of the Yale and SUNY shows, AFAIK.

Audience versus soundboard recording notes.
WV sells a SBD recording of the Lenox 1973 show (which it initially misidentified as Lenox 1972).
A SBD of Saratoga circulates. However, neither of these SBD recording have complete final tracks.
The audience recordings are complete and add many additional minutes of music to the final tracks.

Other: The Lenox "Dream" is the most ferocious version known, IMHO, particularly in the
McLaughlin-Cobham exchanges about three-quarters into the piece.

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Trades Allowed Yes
Ratings Sound: A-
Lists Jazz/Fusion
Owned by Jeff Kaisershot · Last Updated May 23, 2023