(007649) Rush 1996-11-04 Gund Arena, Cleveland, OH (FLAC) (Dave's source 2)

 

RUSH

November 4, 1996

Gund Arena

Cleveland, OH, USA

Audience recording

FLAC 16-bit/44.1khz

"Dave's source #2"

Digital Rush Experience link: n/a

Set list

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01 Intro

02 Dreamline (partial)

03 The Big Money (Alex's solo partially cut)

04 Driven

05 Half the World

06 Red Barchetta

07 Animate

08 Limbo

09 The Trees

10 Red Sector A

11 Virtuality

12 Nobody's Hero

14 2112: Overture (tape flip)

15 2112: Temples of Syrinx

16 2112: Discovery

17 2112: Presentation

18 2112: Oracle-The Dream

19 2112: Soliloquy

20 2112: Grand Finale

21 Intro

22 Test For Echo

23 Subdivisions

24 Freewill

25 Roll the Bones

26 Time and Motion

27 Leave That Thing Alone

28 Drum Solo

29 Natural Science

30 Force Ten

31 The Spirit of Radio

32 Tom Sawyer

33 YYZ

34 Cygnus X-1

Lineage

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1996 live taping and 2023 transfer to FLAC by Dave I.

Recording:

Sony WM-D3 default mic > Sony WM-D3 > Maxell XLII-100s (master)

> Taped from the floor...somewhere. I remember being far back from the PA, but that's it.

Transfer:

Maxell XLII-100s (master) > Denon DR-70 cassette deck (cleaned and azimuth adjusted)

> Edirol R-09 (44.1khz, 16-bit)

> Audacity: L/R balance tweaked, mild low-end EQ boost, mild high-end decrease

> FLAC 1.4.2: level 8, aligned on sector boundaries

Tracked as a continuous recording.

(I didn't split for disc burning. I assume no one burns CDRs these days.)

Comments

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First off, there's good and bad.

** Let's get the bad out of the way: **

1) Security was over zealous. They didn't believe I belonged in floor seating and harassed me about it a few times before finally moving on. The result is that I missed half of 'Dreamline' while we argued. Security decided we needed a rematch during 'The Big Money', so I missed most of Alex's solo while we again argued about the seating info clearly printed on my ticket. I cross-faded both of these cuts to keep them as unintrusive as possible.

2) I was off my game after this, losing track of time and running out of tape unexpectedly, causing a nasty tape flip during '2112: Overture'.

3) There's an inexplicable one-second dropout at 00:35 during 'Freewill'. Not sure what happened there. Did the mic get unplugged briefly? I just don't remember.

After the show I was crushed over the three major cuts. I didn't have a lot of Rush boots in 1996, so missing pieces of those songs felt like a major failing back then. The tapes then languished in a box for decades. Fast forward to 2023 and it isn't such a big deal. We've heard bootlegs with those three songs a million times by now, so it really wasn't the end of the world that it felt like at the time.

The irony is that as security kept harassing me about my seating, they were so busy yelling/waving their flashlights in my face that they didn't notice the wires on my jacket, nor the recorder in my hand. Though my ticket was legit, they would've had me dead to rights for the recording device. Sometimes it feels so great to get the last laugh.

** Now the good: **

For decades the only full recording of this Cleveland show has been "Test It". It's a decent listen, but suffers from sounding a bit distant, distorted and muffled. "Test It" is attributed to the label I-Vent and I've never seen an actual lineage explaining how it was recorded. Analog cassette? DAT? Tin can and string? NASA satellite uplink?

My recording has "Test It" beat for general sound quality. I held my mic over the crowd and the sound is relatively clear. I've done some basic EQing to bring up the low end and tame the screechy highs of the WM-D3's default mic. If you can deal with the cuts in the songs I listed above, you'll enjoy this.

I never traded this out out. It never got a cool, proper bootleg title, nor any cover art. Hence, the name "Dave's source #2". If you want to work up some art and pick out a good name for it, please go ahead.

https://mega.nz/file/vYly0C4Y#ldDg9YcMxCMa-NEeSwdHAfHxg7UPaHJIp_ipFyo7zCI