#108 TOM PETTY & the Heartbreakers - Capitol Records Tower 1977 & #109 STEELY DAN - The 'Lost' Gaucho

October began with a storm of bad news and the musical world was heavily involved. No music fan can fail to have been affected by the events of the last month and beyond.

There have been numerous heartfelt and well-deserved eulogies penned about the loss of so many legendary figures. This month both posts are a small tribute to two of the greatest musicians to have come out of the 70's, Tom Petty and Walter Becker of Steely Dan.

#108 TOM PETTY & THE HEARTBREAKERS - Capitol Records Tower, Hollywood 1977

Tom & the Heartbreakers first found fame in the UK and Europe before being recognised in their homeland during the latter half of 1978. Amongst the punk, roots reggae and new wave explosion of '77, they found immediate acceptance by UK and European audiences.

Pre-dating the 60's classicism that became popular in the 80's, via the Smiths and REM, to name a few examples. The Heartbreakers combined Byrds style riffs via Rickenbacker guitars with a strong rhythmic beat that influenced many bands of the era. Even the Clash were sufficiently impressed to rehearse an instrumental version of 'Anything That's Rock 'n' Roll' on the Vanilla tapes (see the 'London Calling' deluxe edition).

This show is a perfect reminder and celebration, of how brilliant those early songs and live shows were. Anything new by the JEMS team is usually the highest quality circulating version of the show available. The sound on this is excellent as always. If you need to hear more of the best '77 shows, the Record Plant and Roslyn FM broadcasts are commonly circulating.

Studio A, Capitol Records Tower,
Hollywood CA.

Broadcast by KWST 106 FM
Los Angeles CA
November 11th 1977

1st Generation FM Broadcast from The JEMS Archive  
Transferred and Presented By Krw_co

Set List:
01. Intro
02. American Girl
03. Fooled Again
04. Breakdown
05. Listen To Her Heart
06. Don't Bring Me Down
07. Strangered In The Night
08. Anything That's Rock & Roll
09. Shout

Lineage: FM broadcast master > First generation copy > Nakamichi DR-1 (w/manual azimuth adjustment) > Creative Soundblaster X-FI HD Model #SB1240Wav (24/96kHz) > Magix Audio Cleaning Lab for track marks and edits > Wav 16/44.1 > TLH Flac (Level 8) No EQ or other tampering

The Band:
Tom Petty  lead vocals guitar harmonica
Mike Campbell  lead guitar
Benmont Tench  keyboards backing vocals
Ron Blair  bass backing vocals
Stan Lynch  drums backing vocals


Notes: Capitol Studios, a recording facility which includes eight echo chambers engineered by guitarist Les Paul and three main studios, A, B, and C. 

Thank you to JEMS for allowing us to transfer and present these shows to you.
Special thanks to Jared for his many years of taping & archiving.
Many Thanks to Butterking for making these shows available to everybody.
Finally a big thanks to ouster for such a superb site

LINK

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#109 STEELY DAN - THE 'LOST' GAUCHO

original blogger's notes:

For many years, this was considered the holy grail of Steely Dan bootlegs, as it features a complete alternative Gaucho album including several unreleased songs from the Gaucho sessions that were not included on the eventual album.

As is known by most SD fans, Becker and Fagen had to endure various misfortunes during the long and grueling process of the making of Gaucho, which caused numerous delays in its release. Becker was hit by a car, one of their favorite new tracks "The Second Arrangement" was accidentally erased by an assistant recording engineer, and there was a dispute over which record company had the rights to their forthcoming album. MCA won the contract dispute (although Fagen and Becker had already signed to a new label, WB) but then decided to increase the album's list price to one dollar more than all other albums at that time. Donald and Walter tried unsuccessfully to fight the price increase.

Through all this, Fagen and Becker grew more and more disenchanted, and eventually scrapped much of what had been recorded previously, including several entire songs. Gaucho was eventually released in November, 1980. But the ordeal, politics, and aftermath of the making and remaking of Gaucho may have lead to Donald & Walter's decision to call it quits after this album.

The 'Lost' Gaucho is a complete album vastly different to what was released. Of the 8 songs included on the 'lost' edition, only three of these were tracks that appeared on the official album, in somewhat different form. 'Were You Blind That Day' was an early rendition of a song with different lyrics that finally appeared as 'Third World Man' on the released Gaucho. 'Time Out Of Mind' on the lost version is simpler, missing the embellishments added on the Gaucho version. And the title track here is just an instrumental. The rest of the tracks are original unreleased Steely Dan songs prepared for Gaucho, but not used. These include 'Kind Spirit', 'The Bear', 'The Second Arrangement', 'Talkin’ About My Home' and 'Kulee Baba', and have never been released in any form.

As to why so many songs were dropped from the final lineup of Gaucho, a case can be made that this early version was too close in style to 1977’s Aja - shorter songs, sweeter melodies and more accessible lyrics. The finally released Gaucho seemed purposely obscure, deep and complex. Was it to spite their record company MCA? Is it possible that The Second Arrangement was never erased but that Becker and Fagen concocted the story to avoid releasing what they thought was the better version of Gaucho? Listen and decide for yourself.

An alert blog reader who had recently downloaded these files, and who happened to be an audio engineer, noticed that the left and right channels were completely (180 degree) out of phase with each other, which resulted in cancellation and loss of sound from some frequencies (particularly low end), and an overall loss of fidelity in the recordings. I found that all the available sources also had the same out-of-phase problem, so it appeared that these were the versions that have been around the trading circles for years. Fortunately, correcting this type of phase issue is quite simple to do, and it is surprising that it has not been fixed before now.

Anyway, my new audio engineer blog friend, Anthony Ochoa, was interested in not only fixing the phase problem, but also going through the recordings and doing some EQ and clean-up work on them to bring them up to a higher sound quality. So, that is what he did, and his resulting work on The Lost Gaucho has restored these files to a much fuller, richer sound, almost to a commercial quality level with greatly enhanced sound quality

Steely Dan - The 'Lost' Gaucho
(Excellent studio flac)

01 Kind Spirit*
02 Were You Blind That Day       
03 The Bear*
04 The 2nd Arrangement*       
05 Talkin' About My Home*
06 Time Out Of Mind       
07 Kulee Baba*
08 Gaucho (instrumental)       
* unreleased in any form
                                                                -----------------------------

The released Gaucho (November 21, 1980) tracklist is as follows:

Side 1:
Babylon Sisters (5:49)
Hey Nineteen  (5:06)
Glamour Profession (7:29)

Side 2:
Gaucho (5:32)
Time Out of Mind (4:13)
My Rival (4:34)
Third World Man (5:15)

Wiki notes the following:

"In addition to "The Second Arrangement", a number of songs were written for the album, but ultimately left off Gaucho. A number of these songs were included on a bootleg titled The Lost Gaucho, which represents recordings from early in the album's sessions. Song titles include "Kind Spirit", "Kulee Baba", "The Bear", "Talkin' About My Home", as well as "The Second Arrangement". An early version of "Third World Man" with alternate lyrics is included under the title "Were You Blind That Day". This recording dates from the Aja sessions."

LINK