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What a night. Last night was the first time I’d ever taped with another taper and it was an all-around good time. I actually hadn’t planned on going to these BTS shows but a fellow taper had an extra ticket for Tuesday and Wednesday so I came along (seems like this happens a lot lately). So myself and this guy ran a stand from the bar and it was the most enjoyable taping experience I’ve ever had. We had chairs to sit in, a perfect view of the stage and we pretty much had a jovial time.

Last night was also the first time I’d ever dealt with a patcher. For the uninformed, a patcher is someone who goes to a show in hopes that a taper will be there so they can “patch out” of their deck and get an auxiliary feed from the mics. I really don’t have a problem with it and I think it’s a smart, inexpensive way for people who want to guarantee that they’ll get a copy of the show. What I didn’t like was that this guy was drunk, loud and expected me to run his Minidisc deck for him.

Patcher: HAY! Are you the ‘purveyor of the microphones’?
Me: Sure, I guess.
Patcher: Do you have a headphone out I could use?!
Me: Uh, yeah sure. You’re going to need a 1/4″ adapter
Patcher: Yeah I got that covered, man!
Me: Ok, yeah. Here you go.
Patcher: ALRIGHT! I’ve got levels and I’m good to go! So when the band starts just hit this button and then this button and when it’s done hit the button again. THANKS DUDE!
Me: Uh, sure.

Minidisc players aren’t rocket science so I could handle it, but it was a little rude of him to presume that I would want to. He stopped by later to make sure everything was going well by giving me a “thumbs up” coupled with a questioning look in his eyes. I returned the gesture to let him know that everything was ok (or I thought it was, I still don’t know if his MD got a proper recording).

At the end of the night I still had his deck and the guy was nowhere to be found. I was about to just leave his deck at the bar when some guy came up to me to retrieve it, but it wasn’t the original drunky. The guy informed me that he was picking up the deck because the guy who owned it had been kicked out of the venue. To quote my fellow taper: “Imagine that. We definitely didn’t see that one coming.”

So that’s my story that you probably don’t care about. Concerning the actual music: it was an alright show. The openers were decent, if a little on the subdued side and Built To Spill blew me away as they always do. Doug opened with Car and that pretty much sold it for me. They could have played noodly jams the rest of the night for all I cared because that song is pretty much the best BTS song ever.

The recordings turned out fairly clear and decent, but not as good as I had hoped/expected. It was nice that we had our mics at the bar because it’s on a 3′ platform. This made it possible to fly our mics 11′ up (plus everyone around the mics was sitting down). For some reason, Bret Netson’s set has some weird crackling in the waveform and I don’t know why. I saw it happening during the recording because the MT’s peak lights were going off at times when there is no possible way the audio would be clipping. I think it’s time to invest in a better S/PDIF cable.

Built To Spill – 2006-06-13 The Showbox – Seattle, WA
Download: bts2006-06-13.akgc1000s.flac16.zip
MP3 Sample: bts2006-06-13sample.mp3

EDIT: Removed opening sets to make space on the server.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 14th, 2006 at 3:41 PM and is filed under Main, Taping.