1973 March 17/18 WATERBURY vs RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL

upadated from June 2008

many thanks to T! for the RCMH & Waterbury Ticket's!!

do not use them without permission!

setlist: Obscured by Clouds / When You're In / Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun / Careful with tha Axe, Eugene / Echoes / The Dark Side Of The Moon / One of These Days

every Pink fanatic dreams of at least 2 (hopefully complete) different recordings for every show, unfortunately it's rare but there are dates that seem to  compensate this loss, would you like 2 different recorders of the same show? would you 3? would you 4?  ... here you get 6 ... at now!

Now, the question of the date: I'm going through the matter of the date of the following recordings for few years now, but seriously started caring of it on 2004 when some new evidence surfaced leading to believe that those recordings labeled "Waterbury" were really from Radio City Music Hall, NY (73.3.17/early 18)

... still some firm points (or supposed "firm points") seemed to obstacolate the re-re-labeling of the tapes. Yes RE-RE labeling cause, as PF collectors know well, many tapes were originally labeled as Radio City Music Hall and later re-labeled as Waterbury for some reasons.

It could be nice and fair to report the great mess of info that circulated indeed, especially in the latest years, about the HUGE DILEMMA of these controversial recordings, but it would take pages and pages to tell the whole stories ... Again, there are many evidences proving that the date of these recordings listed below isn't really 73.3.18, BE READY TO LEAVE ASIDE ANY SORTA PREJUDICE AND ACQUIRED COGNITION, and above all BE READY TO CHANGE THE VENUE OF YOUR CDs/TAPEs/DATs.

EVIDENCES:

0-1. the Pink Floyd show at the Radio City Music Hall scheduled on March 17,1973 started after midnight (at 1am, see tickets above) making the date of the gig  to be technically March 18 (for some scrupulous ones!), this prolly led some very precise fan to label the recordings as March 18 ... 1. all the tapes of the following recorders were someway originally labeled as Radio City Music Hall either with the date 3.17 or 3.18 for the reason above....

see below the notes on the date of each recorder...

2. Tapes were all re-labeled as being from Waterbury probably because of the matter of the date above, although some misunderstanding surely helped this re-labeling too, mainly the one that followed the listening of some copy given out by a taper who taped indeed the Waterbury show. He, M.E. , gave out copies labeled "Waterbury 3.18" without clearly specifying at first that his own Waterbury tapes were "lost" (if forever or temporarly we still have to find out) and so that those were actually copies not coming from his own masters. He got those copies (which he copied to others then ) from the record company that borrowed his masters and that then gave him back not his originals anymore, but really just a copy of what is known to be "recorder 1" ... yes that's the sad story!; this is a picture of a copy of that "fake" that M.E. gave out.

In few words so: yes there was a show in Waterbury and yes someone surely taped it, but no genuine tapes of that show ever surfced so far.

3. the supposed master of what is known as "recorder 4" was never proved to be directly from the taper (and consequently is no evidence of the fact that it was recorded in Waterbury) ... whereas there are few low generation copies (or even clones) of recorder 1 and 2 that came/come directly from the tapers who clearly labeled them as New York, Radio City Music Hall (either labelled 3.17 or 18)

4. On what is generally known as recorder 1 there's someone in the audience near to the recorder saying "The Dead left" (exactly during the tuneups before Echoes)
since the Grateful Dead had a series of shows at the Nassau Coliseum right in that period  (March 15,16,19) it makes it very probable that they chose to be at the Radio City rather than in Waterbury to attend the Floyd live, as well as it is probable that there were many Dead tapers ready for their concerts who went to see the Floyd too ...

*** a big "thank you" to Anthony Patrizio and Danilo Seffanina for their help! and especially to Thomas Müller for all his info, material and special support! ***
 

these are some of he versions I checked for recorder  1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 6:
Rec.1  - complete (Originally Labelled as 73.3.18 Radio City Music Hall, re-labelled in the early 90s as 73.3.18 Waterbury); different versions of this recorder exist, all are more or less the same, the longest is 126:23 minutes so far, here are some of them: untitled "1st gen." / untitled "2nd gen." / "Waterbury 1973" / "Waterbury 1973 (JFG)"
Rec. 2  - complete  (Originally Labelled either as 73.3.17 or 73.3.18 Radio City Music Hall,, re-labelled  in the late 90s / beginning of 2k's as 73.3.18 Waterbury); the recorder used for the “Dark Side Of Radio City” RoIO or the DR's "Radio City Music Hall" or "New York 73" : these releases  are from an edited version of this recording, longer versions are around like the untitled "Radio City Music Hall" (not the Digital Reproductions release) and the  Wojtek's Collectors' Edition ... Copies on tapes of this recorder are around uncut as well like this very nice 2ndGen (uncut); Clones of the master are in circulation too, like the one included in the "Reeling In Pink Floyd" project having the original channel problems
Rec. 3 - complete  (Originally Labelled either as 73.3.17 or 73.3.18 Radio City Music Hall, re-labelled some time in the late 80s as 73.3.18 Waterbury); this is the recorder used for the 3 bonus tracks on “Obscurity” (incomplete and wrong speed); the complete recording exists and is in circulation often "untitled" or entitled as "Waterbury 1973" like the first recorder, there's a Wojtek's Collectors' Edition of this too; lower and best sounding fan tapes are also around for this recorder like this 4th/5thGen
Rec. 4 - almost complete (Originally Labelled as 73.3.17 Radio City Music Hall, re-labelled some time in the late 90s as 73.3.18 Waterbury, **and that should be a master?**); this is the recorder supposed to be the genuine Waterbury recording for some reasons "Master[Maxell UDXL II CASS]" although there are copies sounding the same as the supposed master that were labeled clearly Radio City Music Hall in the old days, like this "untitled" version; this is genuine recorder 4 till The Great Gig In The Sky, then the 1st recorder is commonly attached as filler; the master is, of course almost
Rec. 5 - incomplete (so far) (Originally Labelled as 73.3.17 Radio City Music Hall, re-labelled in 2003 as 73.3.18 Waterbury by ME, once I found it to be the same as the other *supposed* Waterbury's); inlcudes 2 songs available on the "untitled Radio City" RoIO that has 2 "fake" tracks from Hollywood Bowl 72.9.22. rec1 (exactly Money and Echoes); the Money "fake" track circulated labeled as RCMH 73.3.17 on more than one tape as it seems, as also this fantape from this same recorder confirms.

Rec. 6 - incomplete (so far) (fantapes are around for long, but it was found recently as being from a different recorder than the other 4 ones, Originally Labelled as 73.3.17, and this time I leave it as it is :-) ; fantapes inlcude 4 songs from OBC to Echoes (cut) ... details on the way....

The 6 recorders are very similar one another in some points: recorder 2, 3 and 4 especially have many things in common!!! the tapers were very close one another as it seems... or there can be the remote sad possibility of someone faking a recorder or mixing a couple of them (recorder 4 is pretty weird), but it seems not this way so far,.

these are some points where the sources sound very similar:
[[[NB: The 5th recorder is not to take into consideration here cause it’s hard to tell a point to check, the recording is very poor and short, just 2 songs that start and end with not so many audience portions ... but audience “comments” (whistles, “wows” etc...) before, during and after these 2 songs actually do not coincide with whatever other recorder (I'll try to isolate a sample)]]]

OBC/WY’reIn: there's a guy screaming “waw” on the first note of the bass tune, this is both on recorder 3 and 4.
STC: after Waters sings "little by little the night turns around" you can hear a guy yelling "wow" that’s audible in all the sources very clearly except on recorder 1, where is sounds as very distant.

Both on recorder 3 and 4 there's the same guy at the beginning yelling something + "shut up" and the same guy coughing in the middle of the song (he coughs 3 times) but the clapping at the end is a bit different between the 2 recorders and recorder 3 includes the Waters' “Thank You" at the end of the song and other tunings (missing on the recorder 4 Master). I guess these 2 tapers were really seated side by side.
CAREFUL: the beginning and the end are VERY similar on recorder 4 and 3, but on recorder 4 you can hear at the very end a guy brightening up his voice in the background that's not on recorder 3
ECHOES: soon before the song starts there’s a guy yelling a stuff in a kid-voice both on recorder 3 and 2, but on recorder 2 you can hear ppl around the guy telling him “shhhh”, that’s not on recorder 3 ... and audience comments during the tunings before Echoes are very different.
STM: the same guy laughs with that kid-voice at the beginning both on recorder 2-3-4.

these are unique points where to distinguish the 6 sources (every point is particular of that source and not present in the other ones of course):

Beginning: there's a guy near to the taper saying "oh wow" and then the same guy and others, always near to the taper, screaming "get out / sit down" at repetition; in the long version of this recorder the taper talks about the smoke before the song starts: "oh, sh** smoke!, how dense"; End of When You’re In:  there's a guy yelling "woww woww, yahoo" (on the long version of the recorder a guy near to the mic says to the taper?? "is it turned on?"

Beginning: starts missing the very beginning on the first bass tunes.

End of When You’re In:  there's a guy coughing after the first applauses, includes all tunings before STC.

End of When You’re In: just applauses then the recording cuts.

the taper talks at the end

the taper screams a stuff at the beginning (“right on” ???), includes tunings before Careful.

the taper coughs soon before the first organ tunes, includes tunings before Careful where you can clearly hear a female fan talking

the beginning and the end are VERY similar on recorder 4 and 3, but here you can hear at the very end a guy brightening up his voice in the background that's not on recorder 3. (well, it is semi-perceptible but still) ... and there's not the taper coughing soon before the first organ tunes.

a guy yells “wow-wo-woow” at the beginning and screams yeahhh at the end, then the taper coughs on the mic during the tunings before Echoes

No tunings after the song, audience ‘comments’ are very similar to the ones on recorder 3 but the clapping at the end is different