Motorhead December 11, 1985 First Avenue Minneapolis, MN, United States It Never Gets Dark Tour
cassette side A (41:18) A01. start A02. Iron Fist > A03. Stay Clean > A04. Heart Of Stone A05. interim - comments A06. The Hammer A07. interim A08. Metropolis [introduced as "Minneapolis"] A09. interim - band introductions A10. Mean Machine A11. interim A12. On The Road A13. interim - comments A14. Jailbait A15. interim - comments A16. Killed By Death > A17. Ace Of Spades
cassette side B (37:05): B01. start B02. introduction B03. Steal Your Face B04. interim B05. Nothin Up My Sleeve B06. interim B07. Iron Horse B08. interim B09. Bite The Bullet / The Chase Is Better Than The Catch B10. introduction B11. No Class > B12. Motorhead B13. encore interim B14. interim - comments B15. Overkill B16. end - announcements
This was part of an earlier collection of cassettes I received several years ago in the mail, from an old pal in the Midwest, who goes by the name Ollie. I had always assumed that Ollie recorded this show, since he was a huge Motörhead fan, and he had recorded many of the other shows that were in the two boxes of tapes I received from him. Just after Lemmy passed away, I contacted Ollie and asked him about the show, as the tape wasn’t marked as one of his masters. To my surprise, Ollie said that he was pretty sure that it was a show he did *not* record, and he wasn’t sure who he got it from.
Judging from the signal, it can’t be more than a 1st generation copy at best - assuming that it *is* a copy, of course. Plenty of tapers have given their masters away to someone else, so it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to think that might be the case with this one.
There is a weird processing sound attached to the sibilants in this recording, but I’m thinking that’s a gate on the house mix, and a result of the taper standing right in the stacks for the kind of evenly mixed signal they were able to capture. I’ve gotten that kind of signal on a few shows in the same venue, and generally it comes out clean enough to almost pass for a board tape. Of course, that strategy has also completely ruined a few of my tapes back in the day as well, so it’s a good job this one came out as well as it did, then, considering the kind of volume the system must have been pushing that night.
In other words, what we have here is a classic set of mid-80s Motörhead Rock n Roll. If if doesn’t sound right, just keep turning it up until it does.
2 CDs Audience [possibly 1st generation] cassette [2-channel stereo] > Nakamichi DR-3 cassette deck [Azimuth adjustment applied to playback head] > Edirol R-04 [RCA/analog in; 24-bit/96kHz transfer (.wav)] > PC [via USB] > CD Wave Editor [Version 1.98; Windows Build Number: 0000.23F0] (sector boundary tracking) > Trader's Little Helper [Version 2.7.0; Build 172] (Level 8 .wav > .flac conversion) > TLH > WAV > r8brain (downsample to 16Bit/44Khz) > TLH > FLAC (Level 8) and new FFP FLAC 41:18 & 37:05 min. A-
