1971 November 12: Echoes of Philly

upadated November 20 2004

setlist: The Embryo / Fat Old Sun / Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun / Atom Heart Mother / One Of These Days / Careful With That Axe, Eugene / Cymbaline  / Echoes
 

2 recordings are known to exist for this gig for long, but the actual contents of the 2 recorders are still in discussion; there are several fantapes with different contents for both the recorders (which are both incomplete as it seems). What's very strange is that both the recorders have Echoes but the 2 Echoes are different one another; both the Echoes have not a consequentiality with the rest of the recordings and sound a bit different from the rest of the recordings too, also they both do not correspond to any other circulating performance as far as I stated. The Echoes included in recorder 2 is considered the authentic one so far but I feel free to bring up a suspicion about it. Hopefully other comparisons with other fantapes will lead us to a verdict. What I believe is that the one on the recorder 1 is the authentic Echoes of this date; I believe it because on the tuneups between FOS and STC there's a guy talking with a lady in the back on recorder 1, and there are also a guy and lady talking for a bit during the first part of Echoes in the back on this recorder, they sound to me the same guy and the same lady, also the taper moves the recorder very often during the tuneups on this recorder 1 and he does at the beginning of Echoes too. This has to be verified and to get into some other fantapes may lead hopefully to some conclusions.
here below are some of the versions I checked for the 2 recorders:

recorder 1 includes: The Embryo, Fat Old Sun, Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun (cut), Echoes*; there are fantapes circulating one of them owned and released by R&D called "Higher Education", the 3rd generation tape is the lowest gen circulating from this recorder so far; part of this recorder was used on the RoIO "Those Were Days" too; so far no other songs seem to have been recorded by this taper.
recorder 2 includes: last part of Fat Old Sun, Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun, Atom Heart Mother, One Of These Days, Careful With That Axe, Cymbaline, Echoes* (cut at the end). RoIOs from this recorder are: "Philadelphia Experiment" (complete); "Those Were Days" (uses great part of this recorder and was filled with recorder 1); the untitled Irvine RoIO (missing the FOS portion and the whole Echoes) +  the various fantapes.
 

since the 2 recorders have in common only STC and part of  FOS here is the unique point to distinguish them:

FOS / STC: on recorder 1 you can hear a guy saying "ummagumma" at the end of FOS after the Waters "Thank You", during the tuneups before STC; also a lady talks with a guy during the tuneups in the back; on recorder 2 there are no tuneups between the 2 songs and there's a guy (taper?) clearly sniffing as soon as STC starts.

here is a quick description of the 2 discussed Echoes
recorder 1: the taper moves the recorder a lot on the very first notes, he moves it a lot during other tuneups too on this recording; there's a guy near to the taper, he sounds to me like the guy talking with the lady on the tuneups mentioned above, talking for a bit during the first part of the song, also the lady is actually audible, which makes this Echoes almost certainly the right one, even if in the 3rd generation tape it is audible a cut at the end of it and a little portion with Waters announcing STC then.
recorder 2: Waters announces " This Is Called Echoes" at the beginning, the taper or somebody near to him says something after the announcement, the song is cut fading out before the end; this is considered the genuine Echoes so far.

up to table of contents   >>>    back to Following The Path