#09:2012.10.17 San Francisco, CA - Bill Graham Civic Aud, USA # SPOILER AHEAD #

[Rail King]

Just played "Bonaparte" but it seemed changed to me. You guys will know about these things. It seemed much more of a run through, perfunctory almost, much less dynamic than I recall. Lyrically, it is a song of resignation but, even so, (and I don't really know how to explain my feeling here) there was no real "bite" to the vocal. And not much by way of playing, either. The sound was a bit bass heavy, so maybe that explains my response. I know that some on AMIT don't like "Bonaparte" as much as I do but, live, it has been a song I usually foot-tap my way through, sometimes with vigour. On hearing this rendition, I can't imagine my doing that. Comments, anyone?

I think the bass heavy sound was perhaps due to the location of the recorder or the recorder itself.

As for the rest of your comments, I believe they are pretty valid although it's always hard to tell in a song like this - and by that I mean acoustically dependant - unless one is actually present. 

One thing to bear in mind is that one of the reasons the song isn't popular is because it's overplayed, yes and because for bootleg collectors every version has sounded exactly the same for years!

Funny that Guy Fletcher (on his homepage) should say about the same song that he thought it had "renewed vigor". And for once, I agree with him. The audio quality here is not too good, so it's hard to tell, but I really liked what I heard. To me, it sounded as if they were really into playing this, and I like Ian's drums. The audience seemed pretty happy, too.

[silentguy]

Thank you Sweetsurrender. (have been meaning to ask you, about your nick, a Tim Buckley reference?)

Do you remember this line?

Sweet surrender down to the quayside
Do you remember, we used to run and hide

Yeah, I knew that was where your sig was from,  Down To The Waterline.

[sweetsurrender]

San Francisco Show on Oct 17, 2012 is now on the tracker. 

http://tracker.knopflertk.net/torrents-details.php?id=2369

Enjoy !

[nababo]

Just played "Bonaparte" but it seemed changed to me. You guys will know about these things. It seemed much more of a run through, perfunctory almost, much less dynamic than I recall. Lyrically, it is a song of resignation but, even so, (and I don't really know how to explain my feeling here) there was no real "bite" to the vocal. And not much by way of playing, either. The sound was a bit bass heavy, so maybe that explains my response. I know that some on AMIT don't like "Bonaparte" as much as I do but, live, it has been a song I usually foot-tap my way through, sometimes with vigour. On hearing this rendition, I can't imagine my doing that. Comments, anyone?

I think the bass heavy sound was perhaps due to the location of the recorder or the recorder itself.

As for the rest of your comments, I believe they are pretty valid although it's always hard to tell in a song like this - and by that I mean acoustically dependant - unless one is actually present. 

One thing to bear in mind is that one of the reasons the song isn't popular is because it's overplayed, yes and because for bootleg collectors every version has sounded exactly the same for years!

Funny that Guy Fletcher (on his homepage) should say about the same song that he thought it had "renewed vigor". And for once, I agree with him. The audio quality here is not too good, so it's hard to tell, but I really liked what I heard. To me, it sounded as if they were really into playing this, and I like Ian's drums. The audience seemed pretty happy, too.

Actually I think Mark have changed the harmony of the song a little bit

[Pottel]

wow, what it is is so different now...i REALLY like the violin bit in the middle, and also mark is awesome...

[herlock]

wow, what it is is so different now...i REALLY like the violin bit in the middle, and also mark is awesome...

I thought this was "the worst 2012 concert so far" ? Why did you say that, btw ?
It is good, YTC extended solo, nonetheless I still prefer Saskatoon, this one is perfect sound, the guitar on the YTC outro solo can be heard very well, unlike SF where it is covered by the other instruments.
Saskatoon still my favourite !
Well, I'm still hoping Hide will upload the second night... No offense to Sweetsurrender who was very nice to tape, but Soolos and Hide took the audience recording to another level with their top notch equipment...

[sweetsurrender]

wow, what it is is so different now...i REALLY like the violin bit in the middle, and also mark is awesome...

I thought this was "the worst 2012 concert so far" ? Why did you say that, btw ?
It is good, YTC extended solo, nonetheless I still prefer Saskatoon, this one is perfect sound, the guitar on the YTC outro solo can be heard very well, unlike SF where it is covered by the other instruments.
Saskatoon still my favourite !
Well, I'm still hoping Hide will upload the second night... No offense to Sweetsurrender who was very nice to tape, but Soolos and Hide took the audience recording to another level with their top notch equipment...

No offense at all.  I wish I had better equipment knowing what I've known now how much I would treasure the recordings after the show. I was blown away by Soolos (haven't heard hide) yet. If you said so, must be so. I hope they will upload every show. Do you know if they have 2 nights in SF?

I'll definitely invest in a much better equipment next time when Mark does his whole show.

[jbaent]

Their equipment is VERY expensive!!!!!

[vgonis]

sweetsurrender, i don't really know much about sound, i take for granted what the experts say. But mp3 is alright for me and I wish to thank you for your care and attention. Spending time and stealing even a tiny bit of attention from fully enjoying the show, only to please us is a big thing in my book.

[herlock]

sweetsurrender, i don't really know much about sound, i take for granted what the experts say. But mp3 is alright for me and I wish to thank you for your care and attention. Spending time and stealing even a tiny bit of attention from fully enjoying the show, only to please us is a big thing in my book.

The problem is not that much lossy vs. losseless e.g. mp3 vs. flac... I am a bit tired of these "no lossy files" mantra, because it does not mean anything. To be honest, Simfy recordings were lossy mp3 at a good birate (320 kb/s) and they sounded fabulous; Frankly, 24bits/48khz resolution is a bit overkill for an andience recording. These high-res recs can only be enjoyed on very high-end amplifier + speakers... provided the sound source is really great.

24/96 just gives you the assurance that whatever the mics hearded was faithfully recorded with no loss; but if the mics hear crap, crap will be recorded !

The important thing is more how to capture a good sound in the first place; this is where the 2 hi-fi mics + portable pre-amplifier play a big role, and this is what is expensive.

I wonder btw, how do these tapers hold their pair of mics ? one in each hand ? not very discrete.... one clipped on each side of the jacket ?

[vgonis]

You make an excellent point with the recording equipment/bit rate plus original sound.

As for the mic thing, have you seen the zoom h1 &h2 recorders? the mics are nicely placed and work perfectly, from what I hear. The problem is where to hide it and how to record. And if you read MK.com, recordings are prohibited in this tour. So bravo and thank you to both sweet surrender and soomlos, without reserves.

[herlock]

You make an excellent point with the recording equipment/bit rate plus original sound.

As for the mic thing, have you seen the zoom h1 &h2 recorders? the mics are nicely placed and work perfectly, from what I hear. The problem is where to hide it and how to record. And if you read MK.com, recordings are prohibited in this tour. So bravo and thank you to both sweet surrender and soomlos, without reserves.

For the lossy/losseless debate: yeah, the thing is, some mp3 recordings *can* be great if they were captured properly and if the bitrate is sufficient; I would prefer a properly captured mp3 recording over a badly captured 24/96 flac recording anytime ! but still, the good mp3 recording will be banned from trackers according to the irrational, religious belief that "flac is necessarily good, mp3 is necessarily crap".

So, the absurdity is, good guys with casual equipment (Sweetsurrender, or myself, this has happened to me last year), take their mp3 recording, convert it to flac so that it is accepted by the trackers, which of course does not add anything good to it, only unecessary size... then they are told to say that the source is mp3, which leads to their recording being ultimately removed from the tracker !

Why could not people freely upload their files, being losseless or lossy, and let the users decide for themselves if it suits them ? Despite being a purist, what I usually do is: download the flac files (which takes bandwidth hence time, plus hard disk space) and then I take the trouble to *downgrade* them in MP3 or rather AAC to put them on my Iphone, so that the memory is not completely eaten up. And it suits me perfectly ! a 192 kbs/s AAC is more than enough on the road, I don't feel any difference !

The Soomlos and Hide recordings are of course great, but they are not great mainly because they are lossless, they are great because they have been captured with great equipment by people who know what they are doing. Of course there is nothing wrong with them being lossless, it can only add to their quality, but is it *that* critical to be worth this "no lossy files" mantra ?

I don't think so.

[holaknopfler]

You make an excellent point with the recording equipment/bit rate plus original sound.

As for the mic thing, have you seen the zoom h1 &h2 recorders? the mics are nicely placed and work perfectly, from what I hear. The problem is where to hide it and how to record. And if you read MK.com, recordings are prohibited in this tour. So bravo and thank you to both sweet surrender and soomlos, without reserves.

For the lossy/losseless debate: yeah, the thing is, some mp3 recordings *can* be great if they were captured properly and if the bitrate is sufficient; I would prefer a properly captured mp3 recording over a badly captured 24/96 flac recording anytime ! but still, the good mp3 recording will be banned from trackers according to the irrational, religious belief that "flac is necessarily good, mp3 is necessarily crap".

So, the absurdity is, good guys with casual equipment (Sweetsurrender, or myself, this has happened to me last year), take their mp3 recording, convert it to flac so that it is accepted by the trackers, which of course does not add anything good to it, only unecessary size... then they are told to say that the source is mp3, which leads to their recording being ultimately removed from the tracker !

Why could not people freely upload their files, being losseless or lossy, and let the users decide for themselves if it suits them ? Despite being a purist, what I usually do is: download the flac files (which takes bandwidth hence time, plus hard disk space) and then I take the trouble to *downgrade* them in MP3 or rather AAC to put them on my Iphone, so that the memory is not completely eaten up. And it suits me perfectly ! a 192 kbs/s AAC is more than enough on the road, I don't feel any difference !

The Soomlos and Hide recordings are of course great, but they are not great mainly because they are lossless, they are great because they have been captured with great equipment by people who know what they are doing. Of course there is nothing wrong with them being lossless, it can only add to their quality, but is it *that* critical to be worth this "no lossy files" mantra ?

I don't think so.

Couldn't agree more!

[vgonis]

I believe that "lossless audiophiles" agree as well. It is only a matter of better source sound. If an mp3 source is better, they tend to keep it, even if they find an uncompressed file but with crappy sound. I don't even have time to listen carefully, (more than once) many of these recordings! So many records from fantastic musicians other than MK!  Yes I admit it. 

[JF]

anyway, I prefer a bad sounding recording of MK than a proper hi-fi lossless hi-tech recording of...lady gaga 

during yeras I have listened to music on a porr cassette player, in mono, almost staurated, things I had recorded directly on TV, and sometimes even by putting the mic into an headphone plugged on the TV ! 

and I had some friends who were listen music on CD players, with high-tech hi-fi sound systme, but they were listen to.... JJ Goldman or Patrick Bruel 


Even today I still have my 10 years old tube TV, but I prefer watching the beatles docs I recorded last sunday on it, rather than "the voice" or "danse avec les stars"  or whatever dull TV show on a 50' led screen!!! 

ok ok, I must admit I'm going to by one soon....