Sound Quality: C+
Performance: C+
Overall: 2
This is one of the free concerts from Hyde park, London that were popular in the late 60's and early 70's. I am not certain but I believe the 'open air' type of the show was a strain the bands equipment at the time and coupled with the bad quality of the recording makes this show tough to listen too at times. There are a lot of volume changes throughout and I found myself tweaking the level often. There are a handful of drop outs but that is not so bad. Being a free concert I expected more audience chatter than I found, the level was negligible and not annoying at all.
The performance seemed rather flat to me that might have been somewhat intentional though being a festival atmosphere maybe the idea was to be more subdued, I am not sure but, as I tend to keep harping on about, you lose that edge in songs like 'Careful With That Axe, Eugene' and it really misses the mark.
The highlight for me was 'Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun', it was the most energetic of the songs performed, even though still not a par with other great versions. This was the best recorded of the tracks also which was good. Also notable was the blues start to 'The Embryo' this was very good and segued in well with the rest of the track and gave me another chance to hear Dave's great blues playing.
Track Breakdown...
Blues/The Embryo: We start off with a slow blues piece in the same kind of vein that we are used to. The volume is a bit up and down then we kind of bleach into 'The Embryo' which has the same kind of volume issues, lots of ups and downs with the music being very ragged sounding which worked better for the bluesy start. The part where Rick's jaunty keyboard picks up is low volume too and we get some crowd noise here but it subsides pretty quickly. The whale song was very low key and we get the familiar children playing sound effects as Rick continues
Green Is The Color: After Roger's introduction to this song and the next we get a few songs where the recorder seems to adjust the recording. Dave seems to be a little looser with his playing style for this song than usual which is good.
Careful With That Axe, Eugene: This was a real disappointment, it never seems to really hit the up point it just kind gets a little louder but the crescendo is virtually gone, the song is flat and lifeless. I found a site online (http://www.ukrockfestivals.com/Hyde-park-7-18-70.html) which says of this song - "Even in the latter the volume was down and the mood reflective."
Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun: Takes over a minute to get going, part of the is an intro my Roger and a really long slow build up that might have been hard to pick up due the quality of the recording. This song at least had a little bite unlike the last and seemed to be recorded well with less volume fluctuations that previous tracks.
Atom Heart Mother: BRASS! The recording sounds more dull than the previous track, could be a different source but could be just changes in the performance or the recording due to the short break between tracks. Not a bad version but was the worst recorded so all round not a winner.
Not worth the effort to find, its not great, not really historic. There is some video footage of this concert that exists, I will try to look for it but just really for completeness sake.
Pink Floyd
"Hyde Park (Master)"
Blackhills Garden Party
Hyde Park Free Concert
Hyde Park, London ENG
1970-07-18
AUD [Master]
Technical: Lineage: <none>
Source: <see Notes>
Setlist:
01. Blues / The Embryo
02. Green Is The Colour
03. Careful With That Axe, Eugene
04. Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun
05. [missing] Atom Heart Mother [missing] (announced as "The Atom Heart Mother")
Notes:
Well here it is at last the lost tape from the 18th July Hyde Park 1970 - this is the genuine article. It is a shame that this recording is not complete as it is missing "Atom Heart Mother".
I was contacted by the guy who taped the show and this is a transfer direct from his master tape. The transfer was carried out as follows:
The transfer was made on 10th September 2005 from the master BASF L-C60 cassette onto a Nakamichi ZX-7 cassette deck. Manual adjustment to height and azimuth of playback head to match that of the original tape recorder and to optimise the sound. Direct connection to analogue input of Audiophile 2496 soundcard via high quality Clicktronic interconnects with 24K gold plugs. Recording made to Wav file at 44.1kHz
I fixed a few pop's so that I could normalise the recording but apart from that this is an unaltered version of this show. The sound quality ranges from good to very good, there are some microphone "nudge" noises and some wind noise.
The show was recorded using a mono Phillips cassette recorder with a microphone mounted on a 6 foot pole. The taper, David, was about 100 meters from the stage to the left of centre. Overall the recording quality is mostly very good. Some wind noise is picked up by the microphones and also the quality of the sound changes due to wind "blowing the sound around". Occasionally there is a little distortion but really nothing to complain about considering how this show was taped.
If anybody has a genuine version of the Atom Heart Mother from this show then please contact me.
For Trade or Give Away only - Do not Sell - Do not encode as MP3
Merry Christmas
Steven Carr - 18th December 2005
www.LiveMasterTapes.co.uk
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MY NOTES:
I DL'd this from hejsan in one of the Hubs on 2007-12-16.
According to Povey/Russell (p. 95), the Floyd opened with "...a quietand lazy, bluesy, introduction, they went gently into "Green Is The Color"...", yet The Embryo is in between; and the missing "AHM" contained the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble and the John Aldriss Choir (conducted by John Adlriss).
I renamed the tracks, saving a copy of the original verification mechanism and editing a copy of the original.
pnkflyd@pnkflyd.net
www.pnkflyd.net
real.serious.music.
2007
HYDE PARK recorder 2
Blackhills Garden Party, Hyde Park Free Concert
Hyde Park, London, England, July 18th 1970
Sound Quality: VG/VG+
Source: Audience (recorder 2)
Generation: unknown source > FLAC
4. ATOM HEART MOTHER (24:05m)
well well well... for years getting the Hyde Park recording was a holy quest, and
in the lapse of 2 years, two different recorders surfaced! This new recorder 2
sounds much better than recorder 1, missing Blues/Embryo but having AHM! -which
seems genuine-...
Recording sounds really nice compared to rec1, this seems to be recorded somewhat
near backstage...you can hear the brass section rehearsing between CWTAE & STC,
and you can hear lots of movement of people. About AHM... i checked with all the
others orchestra version and this one seems genuine, or at least, never heard it
till today. The banter at the end ('thank you... ok... we'd like to do some more
but we gotta take our ....' or something) is not present on any other AHM
performance....
There's been some discussion about this source being lossy or not.. some people
here at Y did a great investigative job on this, (http://www.yeeshkul.com/forum/
showthread.php?t=5442) i'd recommend you to go there and search for the thread
and read what's been said. (avoid the insults :p) -gbc
Joined together and artwork re-mastered by Sgt Weatherman February 2009
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