Toots And The Maytals @ San Francisco, CA 1980-05-20

Toots and the Maytals
Old Waldorf
San Francisco, CA
1980-05-20 (Tuesday)

THTP Release 106

Recording chain:
Stage mics > splitter (split to house snake/SBD and TH snake) > TH dedicated snake >
Peavy MkII 12 channel mixing board (10 channels snake, 2 channels audience mics) >
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. Pressure Drop
02. Funky Kingston
03. Get Up
04. My Love Is So Strong
05. Treating Me Bad?
06. 54-46 That's My Number
07. Daddy
08. Reggae Got Soul

Length: 1:1048

Band:
Toots Hibbert - vocals
Henry "Raleigh" Gordon - vocals
Nathaniel "Jerry" Mathias - vocals
Winston Wright - organ
Hux Brown - guitar
Harold Butler - piano, clavinet
Jackie Jackson - bass
Carl Harvey - lead guitar
Paul Douglas - drums
Larry McDonald - percussion

Notes:
* Toots and the Maytals opened for Third World this evening.
* It's worth remembering that for much of reggae's history, it's been a vocal music form, where singers (like the aspiring singer in "The Harder They Come") go to studios, lay down some vocal tracks with studio musicians. This made the studios, like Coxsone Dodds Studio One, Lee Scratch Perry's Black Ark Studios, much more powerful than would have happened if the music form was based around full groups. Bob Marley, and later Toots and the Maytels, would be exceptions to this general rule. The role of sound system operators, like Prince Buster, was also critical, since they were basically the radio of reggae, that's where music was tested to see if people were dancing to it.
* Hux Brown also worked with Terry and Earl Zero, with Tony Chin, Fully Fullwood & Tenor Grant from Soul Syndicate (THTP 86).

* Band website: https://www.tootsandthemaytals.net/
This is a pretty good website, so you can learn all you want about Toots there.

* About group:
"Toots and the Maytals, originally called The Maytals, are a Jamaican musical group and one of the best known ska and rocksteady vocal groups. The Maytals were formed in the early 1960s and were key figures in popularizing reggae music. Frontman Toots Hibbert's soulful vocal style has been compared to Otis Redding... Their 1968 single "Do the Reggay", was the first song to use the word "reggae", naming the genre and introducing it to a global audience. As Island Records founder Chris Blackwell says, "The Maytals were unlike anything else ... sensational, raw and dynamic."
...
The group was also featured twice in the soundtrack to The Harder They Come, the 1972 film starring Jimmy Cliff"

* It is hard to overestimate just how influential "The Harder They Come" was on the world music scene, sending its reggae fueled ripples from Kingston to London, San Francisco, pretty much anywhere that had a music scene and record stores.

* About Old Waldorf: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Waldorf
"Old Waldorf was a music venue located in San Francisco, California. The famous club was located at 444 Battery St, and was originally opened by Jeffrey Pollack in 1976 before selling it to Bill Graham who closed it in 1983. During its time Old Waldorf hosted some of the biggest names in the music industry, such as AC/DC, Dire Straits, Blue Öyster Cult, Iggy Pop, Blondie, Rory Gallagher, Metallica, Pat Benatar, R.E.M., Spirit, Poco, U2 and Dead Kennedys.
The Punch Line comedy club now occupies part of Old Waldorf's location.".
Note: 444 Battery Street (at Washington St.) is about 6 blocks from the location of the Mabuhay Gardens (at Broadway & Montgomery/Kearny), which was in a much seedier part of town (The Famous Carol Doda Condor Strip bar was right by the Fab Mab, on the corner of Broadway and Columbus). But the Old Waldorf was situated right in the heart of the downtown business district, which tended to be completely empty at night after the business crowd had left, so these two venues were very different in feel.
Terry: "The Punch Line was always on the one side of the Old Waldorf building. Jeffrey owned it also. He let me mix shows there a few times when there was no comedy going on that night so I could have some isolation."

* Includes photos.

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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/

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). All the KALX shows went to KALX, they supplied the reel to reel tape.

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

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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 - teetering


https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1E7SwlI0swByV_XdRG_OTQ7NJzd1HmdRf?usp=sharing