(IEM/ALD/AUD/FLAC)
Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band
August 23rd, 2008
Scottrade Center
St. Louis, MO
Source 1: 8x IEMs > Cables > 5x Edirol R-09
Taper: Boothman
Source 2: ALD > Recorder
Taper: ademotte
Source 3: DPA 4060 > Edirol R-09HR
Taper: TallTaper
Source 4: Church Audio Cardioids CA-14 > CA-UGLY Pre-Amp > Edirol R-09HR
Taper: Bakerstuff
Mixed, Produced, and Mastered by Hoserama
Aligned in Adobe Audition
Mixed in Nuendo 4, using extra waves, Ozone, Slate plug-ins
Flac'ed using Trader's Little Helper
Show Mix Version 68
Soundcheck Mix Version 2
01 Intro
02 Then She Kissed Me
03 Radio Nowhere
04 Out In The Street
05 Adam Raised A Cain
06 Spirit In The Night
07 "Sign Collecting"
08 Rendezvous
09 For You
10 Mountain Of Love
11 Backstreets
12 Gypsy Biker
13 Because The Night
14 Not Fade Away/She's The One
15 Livin' In The Future
16 Cover Me
17 Mary's Place
18 Drive All Night
19 The Rising
20 Last To Die
21 Long Walk Home
22 Badlands
23 Encore
24 Girls In Their Summer Clothes
25 Jungleland
26 The Detroit Medley
27 Born To Run
28 Dancing In The Dark
29 American Land
30 Encore
31 Thunder Road
32 Little Queenie
33 Twist And Shout
Soundcheck:
01 Band
02 Then She Kissed Me #1
03 Then She Kissed Me #2
04 Then She Kissed Me #3
05 Band
06 Then She Kissed Me #4
07 Everytime You Walk in the Room #1
08 Everytime You Walk in the Room #2
09 Band
10 Everytime You Walk in the Room #3
11 Band
12 Dead Air
13 Band
14 Little Queenie #1
15 Little Queenie #2
16 Little Queenie #3
17 Band
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Show Notes:
St. Louis 2008 is considered to be one of the top shows of Bruce's live shows over the past 15 years, and depending on who you talk to, one of the top shows of his whole career. The band was in rare form towards the end of that 2008 American Leg, and everything just came together in a perfect storm for St. Louis. Everybody I've spoken to raved about this show, and I consider it a damn shame that I didn't personally get to see it!
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Backstory Notes:
I rarely spend a ton of time mixing a show that I didn't attend, as I generally have a long backlog of my own recordings that need love. But occasionally, exceptions are made. This show ended up being one of them.
Several years ago, Talltaper gave me an IEM source plus the ALD source. I fiddled with it for a while, but there were a lot of dropouts on the IEM source. I knew there were other sources out there, but didn't have much hope of getting my hands on them. Then in the winter of 2012, a multi-IEM mix by Ev2 popped up on the torrents. It’s not often that many other folks put together a multiple IEM mix (my specialty), so I checked it out with a critical ear. However, I wasn't that enthused with the sound. There were some clear time alignment issues, which resulted in some bad phasing. Later, I found out that Ev2 only had a few days for a rush release, and he had planned to release a 'finished' copy in the future. So he gets a pass on the time alignment. I know it took me several weeks to get all the pieces lined-up just right, and that was before I even started mixing! Not to mention all the static clean-up and restoration! A single weekend can't do justice to a project of this size.
In late 2013, I was contacted by Rockcat on DIME, who had the original sources. As a fellow taper with similar nitpicky personalities, we hit it off pretty fast. We talked about mixing some 2005 U2 shows to prep for eventual release, and I asked about the St. Louis 2008 sources. Within two days, I started the time alignment work. The IEM feeds were recorded onto five different stereo recorders (2 stereo feeds + 6 mono feeds), and each had to be carefully time aligned. Then I time-aligned the ALD recording, and audience recordings, etc. Each feed was carefully scrubbed for static bursts and dropouts, and I tried to cover up any blemishes. Then came mixing, tweaking, processing/extractions, and more and more tweaking. My first Nuendo session file was dated for 1/24/14 (after all the time alignment + cleanup), and the final version was dated 4/4/2015. It's been a beast of a project with on/off work for over a year. Despite the many hours spent on the mix, with various automations, it's been a lot of fun. Lots of mixes rendered, and then taking them to shop with lots of notes. But all things must come to an end, and I've got to put this baby to bed and call it a night.
The soundcheck is a nice little bonus. It's mixed from 2 mono feeds. I cooked it up a little bit, but it’s not as elaborate a mix as the show.
Plus, I had to get this out before Springsteen & Co. decides to release their soundboard recording of this show, and steal my thunder!
Special thanks go to all the tapers. I wouldn't have been able to work any of my magic without the tapers. Also special thanks go to the folks who put up with my countless mixes and pleas to nitpick it to death (especially you Rockcat!). It was a team effort on this project.
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Known Issues:
1. There was no straight guitar feed for Nils’ or Bruce’s guitar. I had to get clever with the stereo extractions. There was a pretty clean Nils guitar panned about 50% right on one feed, and I was able to tease that out considerably. The same held true for Bruce’s guitar, but not quite as cleanly. There was an engineer’s feed, which switched around frequently, but often worked for Bruce's guitar solos. But sometimes I couldn't use it because of the switching.
2. Bruce's vocals break up a bit during Drive All Night. It's on all the feeds, so something must have happened at the source. There's also some crackling after Last to Die--again, at the source. I did clean it up some, but it’s still there.
3. All the IEM feeds except two cut out during Little Queenie. If you have a really good ear, you'll hear the mix change for the last two songs, and certain instruments don't punch through quite as much.
4. The balance on certain feeds changes sometimes too...so if at times I boost one feed, that can shift the balance of the vocals. I've done a lot to try and make it as transparent as possible, but sometimes compromises were made.
5. Regarding the audience recordings, I had both set up with a side-chain compressor, so that when the IEM sources got quiet, the volume of the audience sources were automatically boosted. Then one audience send was manually adjusted for specific sections of crowd participation. By boosting those specific sections, it changes the ambience of the recording by adding in more room sound. I did my best to make it as transparent as possible, but again, compromises were made at times. Everybody might draw the line in a different place. Sometimes it might seem like there should be more crowd participation in some spots...but the audience recordings didn't pick it up! What we really needed was a set of omnidirectional microphones in the middle of the floor to capture more crowd noise and less band, but you work with the tools you have, not the tools you wish you had.
6. One of the problems with the brand of IEM system used during this tour is sibilance. The sound processor on the system doesn't handle the higher frequencies (5k-10k) very well, and if it gets cranked up too much, then you end up with some broadband distortion. Some of the 2011 U2 Bono feeds I taped had this in spades. The feed with the best Springsteen lead vocals fell victim to this, and suffers some distortion as a result. I did my best to clean-up the sibilance with a de-esser, and then did some general repair work for the distortion in those spots. However, you may still hear some artifacts. It creates a sound that I call "spitty" in certain sections of the show. Somebody hook me up with a clean capture of Bruce's wireless microphone, and I'll gladly retrack it!
7. There were 8 IEM packs on a single person! Not all feeds were able to receive the tender love and attention that might be given to a single pack. Plus, there are antennas on opposite ends of the stage, so antennas facing you have better reception. Some feeds had a healthy level of static. I've done a lot of clean-up and a lot of patching, but sometimes there are still artifacts from static and drop-outs. It's not perfect, but it’s significantly better than the unprocessed sources.
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Final words:
IEM recordings are not for everyone. If not they're not your thing, either sonically or ethically, there's still the existing excellent audience recording by Bakerstuff out there.
Similarly, I'm mixing primarily for my ears. This is what sounds best to me. This may not sound best to you. That's a fair statement. I'm open to honest criticism (although you should have caught me when I was working on the mix!), but pointless complaining is unappreciated (naturally). Let's play nice.
Bunch of exe files. Bullshit
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