Village Music 23rd Anniv. Party
personnel info:
Jimmy McCracklin's guitarist is named "Pee Wee"
Robert Ward is solo and then on the last 2 songs he is backed by:
Ry Cooder - guitar
Nick Lowe - bass
Steve Douglas - sax
Tony Johnson - drums
John Lee Hooker's is accompanied by just Ry Cooder on slide guitar except for the last 2 songs which also have:
Jim Guyette - bass
Bowen Brown - drums
plus the other guest guitarists (and also Austin deLone on keyboards on the last song)
Transfer (2012-04): SVHS masters: tape 1 - TDK ST-160, tape 2 - Maxell XR-S 120 (just the John Lee Hooker set) > Sony WV-DR7 > Sony DVMC-DA2 Media Converter (DV Hardware Codec Converter) > Final Cut Pro (capture, minor "nip and tuck" edits, chaptering & filter to remove head switch jitter on bottom of screen) > Compressor (downsampling) > DVD Studio Pro (menus & DVD authoring) > VIDEO_TS file set.
Soundboard Dat masters (four Maxell R-120DM tapes) > Panasonic SV-3700 (48K digital output) > Macintosh with Digidesign Audiomedia III sound card > Pro Tools (minor "nip and tuck" edits, normalization and tracking - no equalization or DNR). Audio placed into Final Cut Pro before Compressor downsampling.
Video: NTSC 720x480 VBR 7.7 Mbps peak, 6.2 Mbps average data rate, 2-pass.
Audio - choice of: Dolby Digital 2/0 (L,R), 48 kHz sample rate, 192 kbps data rate
or Linear PCM (2 channel 48kHz 16 bit).
DVD1
Nicky Hopkins solo:
01 - 00:00:00 intro
02 - 00:00:38 piano instrumental >
03 - 00:02:35 piano instrumental
04 - 00:03:45 talk
05 - 00:04:02 The Homecoming [instrumental]
06 - 00:08:47 Nicky Hopkins outro
Jimmy McCracklin Band:
07 - 00:09:07 John Goddard introduces Jimmy McCracklin > Arkansas
08 - 00:12:23 Think
09 - 00:16:21 talk
10 - 00:16:39 Tramp
11 - 00:20:08 talk
12 - 00:20:34 After Hours (1)
13 - 00:25:31 talk
14 - 00:25:48 Strange Things Happening
15 - 00:28:35 talk
16 - 00:29:08 Baby What You Want Me To Do?
17 - 00:34:40 talk
18 - 00:38:40 My Story (with Wayne Bennett)
19 - 00:44:34 talk (Ry Cooder intro)
20 - 00:45:20 The Walk (with Wayne Bennett and Ry Cooder)
21 - 00:53:49 talk
22 - 00:55:25 After Hours (2) (with Wayne Bennett and Ry Cooder)
23 - 01:03:38 outro and applause01:04:18 end
DVD2
Robert Ward solo:
01 - 00:00:00 Your Love Is Amazing
02 - 00:04:21 Danger Zone - Take A Little Bit
03 - 00:09:29 talk
04 - 00:09:45 Blessings (instrumental)
05 - 00:13:41 K-Po-Kee
06 - 00:17:18 Austin deLone introduces the backing band
07 - 00:19:25 Your Love Is Real (with Ry Cooder, Nick Lowe, Steve Douglas and Tony Johnson)
08 - 00:25:09 Forgive Me Darling (with Ry Cooder, Nick Lowe, Steve Douglas and Tony Johnson)
09 - 00:30:29 announcer and applause
John Lee Hooker and Ry Cooder duet:
10 - 00:31:35 intro
11 - 00:33:40 Same Old Blues Again
12 - 00:39:00 talk
13 - 00:40:43 I'm Bad Like Jesse James
14 - 00:44:13 talk
15 - 00:45:25 Hobo Blues
16 - 00:51:41 talk
John Lee Hooker, Ry Cooder with backing band:
17 - 00:53:15 unknown title (with Carlos Santana, Jim Guyette and Bowen Brown)
18 - 00:59:04 talk
19 - 00:59:51 unknown titled Boogie (with Carlos Santana, Albert Collins, Robert Ward, Austin deLone, Jim Guyette and Bowen Brown)
20 - 01:16:45 announcer and applause01:17:55 end
Note:
Careful research revealed no released material. There is some live "John Lee Hooker and Friends" that was recorded at Sweetwater, but it was recorded the following year (apparently June 1, 1992). This John Lee Hooker set would NEVER be officially released because the stage lighting (or lack of it) was not done with video in mind. All of the other sets have good stage lighting but not that one. The BBC also did a documentary on The Sweetwater that included John Lee Hooker, but it's not from this show either.
Anyway, now that we got that out of the way, on to the rest of the info:
Village Music was a little record store in Mill Valley California and its owner, John Goddard, threw quite a few very interesting anniversary parties at the tiny nearby club, The Sweetwater. This is the video that exists from one of those parties. Excellent video and audio quality from 2 camera SVHS master and with audio mostly from Dat soundboard master.
The video is a bit dark for some of John Lee Hooker's set but the quality is still excellent because of the high quality cameras used and the fact that these DVDs are direct transfers from the SVHS masters.
Audio notes: The Nicky Hopkins solo 10 minute "mini-set" is a matrix mix of the Dat soundboard and the SVHS Hi-Fi audio, which itself was a live monophonic matrix of soundboard plus microphone. The rest of it has audio from just the Dat soundboard audio except for the first 1:34 of Robert Ward which is from the the SVHS Hi-Fi audio. The transitions are as seamless as possible but if you listen closely, you might hear some of the changes. Also, the Flac file torrents have a few later minor level adjustments that aren't in the DVD videos.
It should be noted that there are differences in the audio formats available in the DVD-5 and DVD-9 versions: The DVD-9 is the whole thing on one dual-layer disc with just 448K Dolby Digital audio. The DVD-5 version is two single-layer discs, and has a choice of 16/48K PCM or 192K Dolby Digital audio.
Finally, it should be noted that there was one more set of this show that apparently does not exist on video. It was Lee Allen with Steve Douglas, Albert Collins and other guests plus some solo Wayne Bennett at the end. (16/44 Flac files from that set's soundboard Dat master are being posted separately.)
