Leonard Cohen
Looking For Dylan Thomas
Venue: Concertgebouw
City: Amsterdam, Holland
Recorded: October 30, 1980
Label: none
Cat. Number: none
Format: FLAC
Lineage: SBD > Cass > ?? > CDRx > Wav > Cool Edit Pro (see remaster notes) > FLAC Frontend > FLAC (level-8, sector aligned)
Audio CDs: 2
SHN/FLAC Size: 587 MB
Artwork: No
Sound Quality: A-/B+

Performers:
Leonard Cohen - Vocals
Roscoe Beck - Bass
John Bilezikjian - (various)
Bill Ginn - Keyboards
Raffi Hakopian - violin
Steve Meador - Drums
Paul Ostermeyer - Flute, Saxophoe
Sharon Robinson - Vocals
Mitch Watkins - Guitar, keyboards, vocals

Disc 1
Set 1

01 Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye
02 Who By Fire
03 The Window
04 Passing Through
05 The Guests
06 There is War
07 Suzanne
08 The Stranger

Set 2
09 Chelsea Hotel #2 Tape change at 2:14
10 The Partisan Sound quality decreases slightly at 2:31
11 Story of Issac Audience noise fades out for disc change


Disc 2
01 The Gypsy's Wife Audience noise fades in
02 The Music Crept By Us (Poem) / Dance Dance Dance (Improv) >
03 Diamonds in the Mine
04 Famous Blue Raincoat
05 Lover Lover Lover
06 Memories Sounds like there may be a tape flip at the transition into this track

Encore - There is a slight decrease in quality during the encores
07 So Long, Marianne Fades in
08 Seems So Long Ago Nancy
09 Joan of Arc First few notes cut on tape
10 I Tried to Leave You
11 (crowd noise)
12 Do I Have To Dance All Night


Notes:
Remaster Notes:
I recieved the same copy of this show several times, from various different sources. The concert itself is fantastic, but the commonly circulating copy is marred by the existence of a variety of digital skipping errors. There as also a rather high noise floor. My first step was to run through an carefully select and remove all of the several hundred digital errors.
Second, I did some very specific hiss reduction to eliminate the majority of the tape hiss present. There is still some that can be heard during quieter parts of the tape, but rather than risk removing any of the musical content I did a fairly conservative hiss reduction. It's nonetheless an enormous improvement.
The thrid step in the remastering process was to perform some noise reduction on the upper band. Though very light, it was required to take out some noise that was still quite audible in the recording. Again, I did a conservative NR making sure to not eliminate any musical or vocal overtones, so a touch of high band noise can still be heard.
Finally, this tape required some EQing to get it right. I took out a little of the harsh bass and boosted the midrange slightly to accentuate the vocals. The concert was likely mixed correctly but was certainly copied using analog equipment that biased the bass just a tad too much.
The finishing touch was a slight retracking from my CD version to make the tracks start closer to the beginning of the music for each song. Some fadeous and fadeins were added between sets where the tape was stopped.
Note that there is some clipping due to the tape being overdriven in places. I know of no way to clean this up, so there is some distortion during the louder sections. Also, there are a few cuts noted in the tracklisting and the encores are slightly lower quality on the source tape....not sure why.
All things considered, I am very pleased with the results of my remastering. I spent probably about 20-30 hours performing all of these fixes, but sitting down to listen to the final results reminds of why doing this right is so important. The sound is still not top notch quality, but one will find this cleaned up version ten times more enjoyable than previously circulating versions. Dare I say this could be the definitive version of this bootleg?


Performance Notes:
There are few performers who, in my opinion, are able to stand with Leonard Cohen in the tenderness and intensity of their live performances. He consistently bears his soul to his audience, delivering his powerful and personal lyrics in a poetic manner that reveals meanings that the listener never concieved of on the studio recordings. 1980, a time when many other great performers were fleeing for the comforts of glam, punk (or gospel in the case of Bob Dylan), Leonard shows that he is remaining true to his own artistic vision; creating music that is as tactfully arranged and tenderly delivered as it had ever been. A Cohen fan could not ask for a better setlist, and a true music fan could not ask for a better presentation of poetry and music than they will find here on this concert.
-Stephen Pickett, www.audiophilia.net