No Sisters @ San Francisco, CA 1980-05-31

this is great

 

No Sisters
Mabuhay Gardens
San Francisco, CA
1980-05-31 (Saturday)

THTP Release 78

Recording chain:
Stage mics > splitter (split to house snake/SBD and TH snake) > TH dedicated snake >
Peavy MkII 12 channel mixing board (11 channels snake, 1 channel audience mic) >
AKAI GXC-570D Cassette Deck (Dolby B on) > TDK SA-90 tape

Archival Process:
1999: Sony TC-KA3ES > TDK SA-90 tapes playback (NO Dolby) > BBE 462 Sonic Maximizer (to clean up tapes) >
Tascam DA-30 DAT > HHb DAT-125 DAT tape
2002: HHb CDR-850 Professional CD Recorder (In real time) > HHb CDR74 Gold 100 year archival grade CDRs
2005: Transfered to HDD in AIFF file format

Dime release processing: AIFF Master Files > FFMPEG > 16 bit FLAC 8 > tagging, cover artwork, checksums.

Recorded, preserved, and master AIFF files provided by: Terry Hammer

Setlist:
01. Dirk intro >
02. Who Cares It's Summer
03. You Can't Sit Down
04. Totally Vain
05. Older Than You
06. People Like Me
07. Baby Boom Babies
08. Braham's Lullabye
09. Sea Of Tranquility
10. Tossin' And Turnin'
11. Proposition You
12. Who Can Rock?
13. California Girls > Dirk encore abuse >
Encore:
14. Cool Jerk

Length: 45:12

Band:
Peter Barrett - lead vocals
Tim Barrett - guitar, vocals
Tom Barrett - bass
Dave Barrett - keyboards, sax, vocals
? - drums

Notes:
* At about 2:15 of Cool Jerk they shout out the drummer's name, but cannot catch the name. We'll figure it out.
* This is our second visit with the sisterless No Sisters, the first was THTP 41.
* Super high energy, smokin' hot band, hard to categorize, but really good.

* About band:
https://www.discogs.com/artist/1793555-No-Sisters
"No Sisters was formed by the four Barrett brothers: Pete, Tim, Tom and Dave. No Sisters were at one time considered the top unsigned band in the San Francisco Bay Area, and opened for many touring headliners of the day including Joe Jackson, The B52s, The Ramones, and Oingo Boingo. Their first record, the independently released "Roscoe's Family" was a regional hit and was nominated for a Bammy for best independent single of 1981."
* Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Musician-Band/No-Sisters-168917746457062/

* Dirk: "They can't get away from the mirrors upstairs in their luxurious penthouse dressing room.... they're refusing to come out... they're very insecure about their talent, so it would help if you reassure them that despite the fact they lack talent, that you like them never-the-less..."
* Dirk announces the Thursday night 8:30-9 pm Fab Mab Live broadcast.

* Note the Farfisa organ, and the Surf music influences. The 60s compilations (Nuggets, assembled by Lenny Kaye, THTP 48), and the 1979-80 10 volume Pebbles compilations were very influential on this scene.

* Includes pictures.

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No distribution in lossy formats!!
No selling!!
No bootlegging!!
No remastering!!
Yes sharing. Definitely share.

Support the artists when or if they play, and buy their records/merchandise.

Please correct any errors or oversights in this information in the comments section so the information can be as accurate as possible.

If you can find related materials like flyers, posters, ticket stubs, even photos, etc, please add them in a comment and I will add them to the main release folder, so that can be included on the next re-seeding. Every bit is welcome, and as I am time constrained on this project due to the amount of material, I cannot spend as much time on each release doing research as I would like, so if we can add to and improve the information and release contents during this series, that would be great.

Please make an effort to pick at least one of these THTP releases and keep it seeded for as long as you can, particularly the lesser known groups. That will really help out long term.

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About Terry Hammer and the THTP:

Someone put my feelings very well about these recordings in the following quote. I can't really improve on their words beyond noting that these recordings sound absolutely and utterly stunning, and I consider myself incredibly lucky to be able to present these to you here in their original, first generation, lossless hi-fidelity versions, for the first time ever.

"[These recordings were] recorded and preserved by collector/engineer Terry Hammer, for broadcast over the UC Berkeley station KALX and several others from the 1979 -1981 period. Anyone who spent a night at one of these clubs knows how chaotic the atmosphere was. That he was able to, not only get a decent feed from the sound mixing board, but was also able to get clean recordings was something of a miracle. And the fact this guy did it over and over again is pure dedication to the cause of preserving history for decades to come. Fortunately for everyone, he’s been making these gems of history available and their value as historic documents is inestimable. This is really exciting stuff and I am grateful for Terry’s foresight and deft skill."
src: https://pastdaily.com/2014/06/25/gang-four-live-american-indian-center-san-francisco-1980-nights-roundtable-concert-edition/

The First Taping of what was then to be called"The Fab Mab Live", was the Readymades on December 8 ,1979. The Fab Mab Live broadcasts would go on until June of 1981 [but KUSF took the broadcasts over from KALX and Terry January 1981]. Some of these performances were given to the Maximum Rock'N'Roll magazine run by Tim Yohannan, and were distributed to the PBS network for broadcast across the country on various PBS stations that carried the Maximum Rock'N'Roll radio program of interviews and some of [Terry's] live songs of the artists being featured.

As Terry notes about the process of recording these shows: "Like all of my live recordings this was mixed direct to 2-Track Reel To Reel (and Cassette deck for backup and personal use) using headphones. Sitting in the club with the loud P.A. sound trying to drive the amp in my mixing board loud enough to hear what I was mixing.If you've ever been to a live concert,then,you know how loud it can be."

If you've ever been looking for an excuse to upgrade your sound system, these recordings certainly should provide you with some motivation, because they have incredible sound. And if you already have a quality sound system, you are in for a treat!! The audio goes straight to 20k hz, no losses I can detect. Due to the reality of tapes, even high end as used here, the low end starts at 47 hz.

And if you want to learn more about this incredible musical era, listen to the stuff you haven't heard, there are amazing gems in there.

Do we call these soundboards? Technically not precisely because this is not the house mix, these shows were mixed using a dedicated mixing board, with an additional 1 to 2 audience mics (1 for Mab because he needed 11 snake inputs), 2 at other clubs) in the mix. But I call it the Terry Hammer Tape Project (THTP) to make sure there is no doubt about the project's creator.

TECH:
Note that Terry made 2 master recordings (recording at the same time) when he mixed these shows live:
1: Reel to reel, for the radio stations:
Technics RS-1500 Reel To Reel (mostly TDK Audua L-1800 & LB-1800 tape with back coating or Scotch 206 / 207 with back coating. Maybe a few Maxell UD-XL). Terry made Dirk buy the tape for the Mab so Terry had him keep them in his warehouse. Those were destroyed in the fire.

2: For his own use, and as backup in case something happened to the reels:
AKAI GXC-570D Cassette Deck (Dolby B on) > TDK SA-90 tape

3. Terry stopped doing the Fab Mab Live recordings for KALX in January 1981. He turned it over to KUSF then and they actually installed a phone line and broadcasted live from there. So all Fab Mab shows after January 1 were Terry at the soundboard, recording straight into his cassette deck.

Terry isn't sure, but thinks the audience mics he used maybe were Electro Voice EV-DS35's.

Info: http://www.bbesound.com/products/sonic-maximizers/482i.aspx

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About Dirk Dirksen and the Mabuhay Gardens/On Broadway:

Dirk Dirksen (RIP 2006), aka 'The Pope of Punk', was the music promotor and MC (but really more accurately, the impresario) of the Mabuhay Gardens/On Broadway punk clubs. Dirk was an incredibly interesting, sharp-witted, biting, cutting element of the original San Francisco punk scene. His legendary introductions and post set commentaries are preserved in many of these recordings. Dirk was a nephew of United States Senator Everett Dirksen.

Shows at the Mabuhay started probably in 1977. The On Broadway was an upstairs night club right next to the Mabuhay that opened in summer 1981 and closed 1984. Terry recorded / broadcast Mabuhay gardens shows weekly. He was also the first soundman at the On Broadway when it opened in 1981 (they initially only did Friday/Saturday night shows).

The Mabuhay Gardens was originally a Filipino night club/restaurant run by Ness Aquino (RIP). One fateful day he was approached by Jerry Paulsen, who offered to try to fill the club on slow nights (Monday/Tuesday) with punk shows. Dirk took the booking and MC duties over from Jerry, and the rest, as they say, is history.

"...deliberately baiting and trading insults with audience and band members, which had the effect of raising the energy of audience and performers alike. In order to maintain the show's fast pace, he would move past an encore to get to the next band and tell the audience, "Eat it." Dirksen's abrasive persona (which was largely a performance) was a central part of the atmosphere of the Mabuhay.
...
Dirksen was the sole person responsible for connecting the English punk rockers with those in the United States. By creating an exchange program, punk bands for England and NY came to the Mabuhay and vice versa, staying in each city performing a few nights at a time."

Terry remembers him like this:
"He believed in theatre and group participation that's why he was sarcastic. He wanted to get a rise in people and get them to participate. He was a really nice person if you got to know him."

Dirk was also active with the organization H.E.A.R. (Hearing Education and Awareness for Rockers), the organization started by Kathy Peck of the Contractions (also part of this THTP series).

It was hard to really know how diverse his interests were until I went to his memorial service in San Francisco, where his punk friends and connections were only a fraction of the people who spoke in his memory. He was involved in various charities, the Mission Recreation Center, the list was quite large.

Apparently a book about Dirk Dirksen will be coming out Summer 2020.

Wikepedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mabuhay_Gardens
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirk_Dirksen
SF Gate obituary: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Dirk-Dirksen-pope-of-punk-amused-insulted-2466523.php

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 - teetering


https://pixeldrain.com/u/FEtNJ3nD