2008-07-30

The Subways w/The Bruises - 2008-07-30 - Bottom Of The Hill, SF

photo credit: theowlmag
This is the story of one that got away....

First, the Subways...to pull from an email written to my gig-going compatriot the following day...

"Not my best effort, as I missed the first 3 tracks (don't know what happened there, luckily noticed this) and had to leave out the last pre-encore track as I was running short of battery. Also, having to free up my hands during "I Won't Let You Down" meant the mic got stuck in my pants pocket...ended up muffling the sound...lesson learned: don't be a sheep and clap when Billy orders you to. :)

Still, very listenable, and it looks to be only live performance of theirs up on (a certain Bittorrent site). I'm sure a few Brits will pull this down, and hopefully reseed their 6 Music performance for me to grab.

The opening act (The Bruises) sounds really good, BTW...due to the Sonic Studio mics and nice female vox harmonies...but haven't mastered that one yet."

It turns out I would never get the chance...I vaguely remember HDD failure around this time and lost the WAV files as they're not archived anywhere, so this is the veritable one that got away.

At least I have the Subways set, which I'm listening to, from the alternate pull, done by a certain PunkRockster. And to honor his wishes, the files have been kept untouched, and I have included his text file both here and in the fileset.

The Subways
2008-07-30,
Bottom Of The Hill,
San Francisco, California, USA

Giant Squid Omni's with External Battery Box > Edirol R-09 > 24bit/44kHz > SD USB card reader > Mac OS X > Logic Express (Balance, fades, tracking, POW-r #3 Noise Shaping Dither to 16bit .wav) > xAct (FLAC LEVEL 8, Tag, Verify) > BitTorrent > YOU

Recorded, tracked and seeded by PunkRockster.

01 Kalifornia
02 Young For Eternity
03 Oh Yeah
04 Alright
05 Mary
06 Shake! Shake!
07 I Won't Let You Down
08 I Want To Hear What You Have Got to Say
09 Turnaround
10 With You
11 Girls & Boys
12 Rock & Roll Queen

Trade freely and losslessly. Include this txt file. No remasters.

SUBWAYLAID AND BRUISED

P.S. If my own Subways recording can be located, I'll add the link here for it, but pretty sure The Bruises opening set recording is lost. The SF-based band have a few vids up on YouTube to give you some idea of what they were on about. 

Update:  I was supplied with a copy of my own recording.  Sample it here:

MY SUBWAYS RECORDING

 

Contemporaneous notes: 

Up and coming UK indie group in the vein of Ash or The Arctic Monkeys.
See http://www.myspace.com/thesubways if this catches your fancy.

Taper: lammah

Equipment/lineage:  Belkin Tunetalk > iPod 5th gen > WAV > Adobe Audition  (Clip reduction > sloping Hi EQ in parts   > normalize to -1dB) > CD Wave (tracksplits) > FL

First three songs not taped, sadly.  Not sure what happened...only starts with the end of the 4th track.

During track #7 I stuck my iPod in my pants pocket, which ended up muffling the sound.

Had to omit 'Oh Yeah' (song #10, last one before encore as I was running out of battery power)...didn't help, as I didn't make it all the way through Rock and Roll Queen.  Oh well.

My friend Tomzero was visibly annoyed by Billy's over-the-top "San Francisco put your hands in the air" routine. I thought it brilliantly Spinal Tap, it was all in good fun.  We were a bit of a loss as to why they were playing for only 200 when in the UK they can do ten times that.  Somebody's blowing it...