Manifesto! Twin Shadow - Bimbo's 365 SF

Welcome to my latest failed Sunday morning/night experiment.

I've been meaning to do something like this for years, but never seemed to quite get it together to actually try. I guess that changes, starting...now.
 

I've been recording live shows (mostly independent acts, but there's a few weird exceptions) in the San Francisco Bay area for several years now. Anyway, our first selection (and inspiration for the title of this b**g) is the fabulous George Lewis, Jr. aka Twin Shadow. I have to credit The Dumbing Of America for turning me onto his Twin Shadow's Forget in the first place.

There are two things you will never see here:   

1. Any attempt to monetize any of my offerings for myself. That would be tantamount to selling live recordings, which is strongly against the ethos of any ethical taper. I would encourage...nay, demand that if you enjoyed listening to any of the featured artists, that you purchase their recordings, see them live, and buy their swag. Some groups aren't shy about the touch-and-go nature of being able to get help to make their touring worthwhile, but others would rather die than have to beg.

With that said, I recognize any artists who appear here have a moral right to not want their material available for download, and will gladly remove anything they do not want heard. It's not always about the financial...sometimes, performances are off-kilter so badly that the person responsible sees no positive virtues in having their dirty laundry aired, even if fans find interesting qualities to a particular 'off-night'.  


2. Any vindictive negativity towards musicians over their style of performance. This involves me biting my tongue really, really hard. For example, both myself and my friend were not greatly enamored of the headlining act Twin Shadow were opening for, but a lot of people who were there did enjoy themselves, so I suspect a lot of it had to do with our tastes not being in line with what the crowd wanted to see and got. Okay, maybe our objections are in fact critically sound (imagine a resurrected Lester Bangs nodding his substance-sodded noggin in assent) but no matter, if I don't like something, you won't see it here. I live by the phrase, "Better remain silent and be thought a fool, than speak out and remove all doubt." Plus, things change, and my own assessments of groups have been known to change once I can review the live recording I made of them, mostly for the positive. This is one big reason why I do this!


"I'm in the belly of the canyon...I can't come up with any reason...why a ghost is following me." (At My Heels)

What was I blabbing about again? Oh yeah, Twin Shadow.  He's signed to 4AD now. I asked him after the show about that and he said it was a "dream come true". For us...I can't wait until Vaughn Oliver or whoever Ivo has on tap these days gets his design wrapped around their future issues. I really like Mishka's review of his album, and figure the enterprising reader can use the Google-matic and do their own research on why Twin Shadow matters. 

Anyway, here's the details of my recording, after the jump...


Twin Shadow

2010-10-01

Bimbo's 365

San Francisco

Equipment: Sonic Studios DSM-6/L mics > Sony PCM-M10 recorder

Setlist

tuning-up, intro / Shooting Holes / When We're Dancing / Slow / At My Heels / our last tour spot [interstital] / Castles In The Snow / we are hanging out [interstital] / I Can't Wait / Forget

During the first song, I had the levels way up right until the vocals started, where they dip to near-zero before finding the sweet spot. I had to do some tricky editing to handle that.

And that's me woo-ing when GLjr introduces Slow. You'll live.

...

Oh, another idiosyncrasy, and a bit of a change in plans with respect to my original vision when I started this blog in October of 2010. This and all future recordings will usually appear in MP3 format, which like it or not, is the common denominator for music sharing, even if the format is nearing its 25th birthday and is often inadequate for the task at hand.  It also allows me to utilize my storage more efficiently, since I've moved to self-hosting the audio files I provde. 

Requests for lossless versions can be sent to requests@atmyheels.com.

These will either be made available directly to the requester or via the Bittorrent tracker running at http://incubation.atmyheels.com.