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1981-11-14 Boston (a Darren Glen remaster)10/19/2008 09:43:08 AM

I received a request in the mail a few days ago to share an October-era recording called "Black Cat In Boston" (from a 14 November 1981 performance). I had already shared this particular bootleg back in November of 2006, but it was such a memorable bootleg that I thought it worthy of a rare re-seed. However, when I went into my archive to pull it out and put it up on the tracker, I realized that since sharing "Black Cat In Boston" two years ago I had acquired three more versions of this concert. Well, obviously I couldn't just leave it alone, I had to compare.

First, a tiny bit of history. This concert was broadcast by Boston's WBCN radio, so naturally there are many versions of this floating around in private collections from people who taped the show. "Black Cat In Boston" has for a long time been generally accepted as the best version available and is likely a remaster of the pre-broadcast material used by the radio station. Now, looking at what I have, the first version I examined was a direct rip of the pre-broadcast source material. It is really not that great, being somewhat muted. The next version is a remaster from the well-known and very talented Fradoca of this pre-broadcast source. His remaster is a radical improvement over the source material, and somewhat better than "Black Cat In Boston" which suffers from a little too much emphasis of the high end. Finally, I have another remaster performed by Darren Glen (some of you may remember he was the taper of one of the best recordings from the Vertigo tour in Australia). Darren's source material was a low-gen cassette tape. It is every bit as competent a remaster as Fradoca's, making it a tough choice: Black Cat, Fradoca, or Darren??? Share the bootleg requested, share a quality remaster of the source pre-broadcast material with known lineage, or share another quality remaster from a source with a less-well-known lineage???

In the end, I chose Darren Glen's remaster. It was not an easy decision. Both of the remasters are excellent, and no one should take my selection as indication that I prefer either person who executed the remasters. The clincher came down to a nearly imperceptible nuance, a vague quality. Darren's remaster simply had more substance to the sound. It was. . . meatier. And that subtle difference swayed my decision.

So, David, I may not be giving you exactly what you asked for, but I hope you find this substitution worthwhile. It is a very good U2 bootleg.

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Comments

1. David10/19/2008 10:47:06 PM

I'm listening to it now! I love the mix, much better than the "Black Cat In Boston" mix I had found.
Thanks for taking my request! Keep the pictures coming!

David

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