Metallica September 15, 1989 Shoreline Amphitheater Mountain View, CA, United States Damaged Justice Tour
01 Intro: The Ecstacy of Gold 02 Blackened 03 For Whom the Bell Tolls 04 Welcome Home (Sanitarium) 05 Harvester of Sorrow 06 The Four Horsemen 07 The Thing that Should Not Be 08 bass solo 09 Master of Puppets 10 Fade to Black 11 Seek and Destroy 12 ...and Justice for All 13 One 14 Creeping Death 15 guitar solo incl. Little Wing 16 Battery 17 The Frayed Ends of Sanity excerpt / Metallinoodles 18 Last Caress 19 Am I Evil? 20 Damage Inc. 21 Blitzkrieg 22 Breadfan
Karl obviously had a difficult time at this general admission show. These were his first shows with the D6, having purchased it for this run of Metallica concerts. He was being jostled by the crowd frequently, and there were a ton of mic bumps throughout the show. The soundstage moved around constantly from heads passing in front of the mics and Karl's movements, and there were occasional dropouts in the channels. The recording was quiet (probably because the previous show in Sacramento was oversaturated and a bit distorted and he was taking no chances), so there's a degree of hiss. The third tape side was particularly damaged, including blank spots where the mic was loosened from its plug and cut out many times. Also, this tape had very little low end. By EQing the lows back in I made the mic bumps and errors far more noticeable, so all the flaws were either attenuated, EQd or cut out completely. Patches were taken either from another place in the song or, in cases of larger damage, the show Karl recorded in Sacramento on December 12, 1988.
Most of the show was not too bad. I clipped out or attenuated a bunch of mic bumps, fixed dropouts, evened out the levels where they jumped and fixed some of the wild panning. It went fairly smoothly until we got to Fade to Black. The crowd must have gone berzerk during the final guitar solo, because it sounds like Karl got sucked into the mosh pit for a minute. Because of this bit of the guitar solo has been patched from Sacramento. Also patched was a tapeflip that occurred just as Jason started playing Orion after his solo. I kept as much of this show as possible, but about 20 seconds was unsalvageable.
The second tapeflip happened a split second after the last note of One, and this is where the problems really began. The encore break and the beginning of Creeping Death were missed, the levels went all crazy, and it sounds like the mic was hidden. This issue lasted until the end of the second verse of Creeping Death. I've chosen only to patch the missing start of the song and leave as much of this performance as existed, bad sound or not, but there was about 30 seconds lost to manhandling the mics.
Around the 2nd encore a speed slippage issue that I had noticed appearing occasionally throughout the show really became prominent. There are little slips in the speed that are so small I can't chase them out which then become a constant wobble by the start of Am I Evil. It's not that noticeable, but it's there. There is discussion between Karl and his friend during the last encore break about tapes snapping, on the friend's recorder, so Karl wasn't the only one with deck issues.
All in all a lot of work was done to restore this show for a more pleasant listening experience. I hope my efforts are appreciated by the Metallica fanbase.
2 CDs Karl Lundmark Audience Karl Lundmark Aiwa CM 30a mic > Sony WMD6c TDK SA90 cassettes (1) > Optimus SCT-57 playback deck > Adobe Audition 1.5 (recording to .wav @ 24/96, speed correction, EQ, normalization, splits & fades) > Xrecode II (flac 8) FLAC
