Washington University
FM recording (courtesy of the McKenzie Tapes project)
Sound quality: VG to VG+
LINEAGE: McKenzie Tapes recording (16-bit wave file) > Adobe Audition 2025 for de-noising, phase correction, and normalization > AIFF file > Audacity 3.7 for Mac for track splits, 1 additional pass of NR, and EQ > FLAC
SAMPLE: West of the Fields (live 1984-10-06)
01 Harborcoat02 West of the Fields
04 Pilgrimage
05 7 Chinese Bros.
06 So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry)
07 Hyena
08 (Don't Go Back to) Rockville
09 Barney Miller Theme - Chicken Train
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10 Sitting Still11 Letter Never Sent
12 Gardening at Night (fades in)
13 9-9 - Frogmore - Windout
14 Old Man Kensey
15 Pretty Persuasion
16 band exit - crowd - return to stage
17 Little America
18 Second Guessing
19 Paint It Black
20 In the Year 2525 (false start)
21 In the Year 2525
22 We Walk w. Behind Closed Doors
23 Femme Fatale
24 1,000,000
About this recording & performance:
I started with a diamond-in-the-rough lossless recording kindly provided by Tom G. from the McKenzie Tapes Project (learn more at themckenzietapes.com). The recording had no known lineage, but my ears heard a generated FM recording that suffered from multiple deficiencies. On a quality scale, I would have rated it a C-. After a couple of attempts at digital revision over the past 2 years, I’m finally happy with the result. It’s now a decent-sounding FM recording that merits an overall grade of B in my rating system, with just a few sections that dip slightly. In sum, this is quite listenable, even for fans who only want to hear higher quality recordings. Performance wise, this is one to savor: the band is on, and having fun — tight and confident this far into the tour, but loose enough to play requests (ex: a rousing version of the rarely-played Paint It Black). This is one of my favorite recordings from 1984 by R. E. M.
