Leonard Cohen - 1968-xx-xx - London, UK (SBD/FLAC)

(Soundboard FLAC)

Leonard Cohen

The Paris Theatre, London

Spring 1968

Professor Stoned source, 2016

01 - You Know Who I Am

02 - Bird On The Wire

03 - The Stranger Song

04 - So Long,  Marianne

05 - Master Song

06 - There's No Reason Why You Should Remember Me

07 - Sisters Of Mercy

08 - Teachers

09 - Dress Rehearsal Rag

10 - Suzanne

11 - Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye

12 - Story Of Isaac

13 - One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong

Time: 61:59

Source: Soundboard -> Pre-FM Reel-To-Reel Master -> Cassette -> ? -> Mastering 2016 > FLAC

Recorded live at The Paris Theatre, London, Spring 1968

Originally broadcast on BBC2 TV: 31 August 1968 (Tr. 01-05) & 7 September 1968 (Tr. 06-13)

[Revision 1.0 / 18-9-2016]

Notes by Prof. Stoned:

A very important bootleg, IMO, that begs for an official release. Reportedly, it was sourced from a cassette copy that a fan got directly from an BBC employee after writing a letter to inquire after the status of this recording. The BBC employee also mentioned that this came from his private copy and that video sources no longer existed in the archives.

The audio recording was first heard by the public in 1993 when it came out on a pressed CD bootleg in inferior quality. Then later in the mid-2000's it started to circulate in better quality. I first heard this in 2006 when someone uploaded it on Dime's tracker. Although pretty clean, that source was marred heavily by noise  reduction artefacts. For this new version, I have used another source that I found on another tracker. It had more noises and also some signs of NR, but substantially less than the 2006 Dime source. I fear this is probably as good as it's gonna get, unless someone manages to obtain a clean digital copy of the BBC cassette, which to my knowledge is not into circulation.    

Despite the obvious deterioration to the source material, the sound quality here has still turned out quite good. I have carefully restored and remastered this at my mastering studio. The original source sounded a bit dull. By bringing up the high-end a bit, the NR problem and hiss also became more apparent, but I think I found an acceptable balance (to my taste, anyway). I also corrected the correct speed of the two original parts (one ran a bit too fast, the other a bit too slow).

To me, the historical importance outweighs the sonic flaws by far. Four songs performed here (not counting Tr. 06, which is more a joke than a song) were unreleased at the time, though already fully realized. Some of the arrangements are quite different from the studio versions and there's an extra unheard verse on Tr. 04.