May 08

Mike Watt • 1998-05-24 • Mpls MN • 7th St. Entry

Watt + The Black Gang rip through the complete Contemplating The Engine Room opera, plus a few covers by Daniel Johnston, Wire, and Blue Oyster Cult [link to audio below]

• • • •

Mike Watt And The Black Gang
Minneapolis MN
7th St Entry
24 May 1998
3rd Time Before The Mast Tour

Contemplating The Engine Room / The Opera:
side A (45:38.60):

  1. start (00:31.51)
  2. In The Engine Room (04:23.04)
  3. Red Bluff (03:10.13)
  4. The Blue Jackets’ Manual (02:06.02)
  5. Pedro Bound! (02:47.15)
  6. The Boilerman (04:46.16)
  7. Black Gang Coffee (03:23.24)
  8. Topsiders (02:14.60)
  9. No One Says Old Man (To the Old Man) (05:37.51)
  10. Fireman Hurley (02:00.52)
  11. Liberty Calls! (04:43.71)
  12. In The Bunk Room / Navy Wife (02:19.04)
  13. Crossing The Equator (03:30.46)
  14. Breaking The Choke Hold (04:04.26)

side B (13:54.56):

  1. Wrapped Around The Screw (02:04.53)
  2. Shore Duty (04:51.08)

Encore:

  1. encore applause (01:41.45)
  2. interim / comments (01:01.29)
  3. The Red And The Black (04:15.71)

side C (22:18.72):

  1. Walking The Cow [Daniel Johnston] [beginning cut] (01:51.69)
  2. encore applause (01:47.34)

Encore:

  1. Big Train (03:11.31)
  2. Forever… [Dos] (02:08.15)
  3. One Reporter’s Opinion [Minutemen] (01:51.69)
  4. encore applause (01:31.58)

Encore:

  1. The 15th [Wire] (03:00.48)
  2. interim / comments (00:37.58)
  3. Drove Up From Pedro (04:13.40)
  4. comments (02:42.08)

Mike Watt : bass; spiel
Joe Baiza : guitar, vocals
Bob Lee : drums, percussion, vocals
Steve Reed : house mix, vocals from desk

Supporting Acts:
So-So
Scrawl

• • • •

From:
http://hootpage.com/index.html

watt and the black gang “3rd time before the mast” tour ’98 (apr – jun). joe baiza was on guitar and bob lee was on drums. read the tour diaries:
http://hootpage.com/hoot_3rdtimediary1.html

• • • •

There isn’t any mention of this show – or the one from the following night in the same venue – on Mike Watt’s Hootpage, as the tour diaries stop just a few dates before they arrive in Minneapolis. For whatever reason, the last entry on this leg of the tour is from May 14, in Boston. The tour diaries pick back up on September 24, in Tucson, and by then, Joe Baiza was gone, and Nels Cline was on the guitar.

For this show, Watt + The Black Gang rip through the complete Contemplating The Engine Room opera, and then give us a few encores for good measure, including a few covers by Daniel Johnston, Wire [!], and of course, Blue Oyster Cult.

Steve Reed (Watt’s sound person for these shows) added vocals from the sound booth in back of the room. His vocal contributions can be heard on a few songs, actually, but I really liked his vocals during the break on The 15th.

I was running a set-up in the Entry which consisted of two PZMs in an reversed X-Y configuration, sitting on a small plank suspended from the ceiling dead center, about 10 feet or so from the center of the stage. The cables ran to the back of the room, behind the sound booth, so I could bring in a deck (or some times two decks in series), plug in, and run the controls from a somewhat isolated vantage point. I recorded numerous shows over a few years with this set-up, and it worked great most of the time.

If the sound quality of this recording sounds a bit over-saturated, that’s because it is. The problem here is that I would occasionally experiment a bit with this set-up, and the saturation comes from one of two experiments that in retrospect, didn’t fare so well. I can’t tell from my notes for this show, but I was doing one of these two things: either powering the PZMs with 2 camera batteries instead of the 1.5 AA batteries they called for, or running auxiliary PZMs on stage. Both of these techniques could be tricky, depending on the show, and sometimes really over-emphasized the low end signal, resulting in a kind of sputtering distortion that doesn’t really overpower the music, but does interfere with the signal being as clear as it could be.

The good news is that with a little time and the right gear [I’m talking analog gear, not an app or other software], I know this could be cleaned up really nice. I’d love to do it myself, but honestly, I don’t have all the time in the world to devote to projects like this, and my analog gear is generally tied up for other projects that pay the bills. Besides, I’ve got a LOT more shows waiting to be digitized, and I really can’t give each one the time some of them probably deserve, so I reckon it’s best to just put them out here, warts’n all. If someone has the ability to download this and play it through an analog equalizer, I’d reckon that some selective tweaking of the low end between 20 – 500 Hz should eliminate most of the saturation noise. If someone was serious about taking that on, it would be best to work from the source tape, so feel free to get in touch. Maybe at some point I will be able to get back to this, but for now, it seems more important just to get this out there to share with other fans. After all, none of us are getting any younger. Hope you can dig it!

J.Free / sonicarchives.com

• • • •

This is a 24 bit / 48kHz stereo audience recording.
No processing has been applied to these files.
Duration: 01:21:52

Lineage:
Transferred March 25, 2023: cassette [2-channel stereo] > Nakamichi LX-3 cassette deck [Azimuth adjustment applied to playback head] > Edirol R-04 [RCA/analog in; 24-bit/48kHz transfer (.wav)] > PC [via USB] > CD Wave Editor (sector boundary tracking) > Trader’s Little Helper (Level 8 .wav > .flac conversion, .ffp)

Source:
2 Radio Shack / Tandy PZMs > unidentified home stereo deck [most likely a Sony (unknown model)] • recorded about 10 ft back from center stage > master cassette

Taped by:
J.Free / Sonic Archives

Transferred by:
J.Free / Sonic Archives

Tour shirt photo by:
J.Free / Sonic Archives

Download or stream the show from Live Music Archive:
https://archive.org/details/mikewatt1998-05-24.aud.flac2448