I recently received a few ADAT tapes from Sammy.
I believe they are from these shows.
09/28/2000: Great American Music Hall: San Francisco, CA setlist missing
Notes:Animal Liberation Orchestra opened
09/29/2000: Palookaville: Santa Cruz, CA setlist missing Notes:The Mermen opened]
He didn't really remember how they came to be or where the missing tape(s) might be. He didn't record them because they (and he) never had ADAT machines. These machines could each record 8 tracks of 16 or 20bit audio onto VHS tapes. You could sync multiple machines to get 16 or 24 tracks at once. To continuously record a concert you would need 6 machines because the tapes recorded like 40 minutes each and ideally you would kick to a second rig for overlap during the set. Either that or try to pop in three new VHS tapes and get them synced and rolling between songs. ADAT went the way of the Dodo. Most studios deracked them a while ago. I tracked down a working set and today I went into Sonelab in Easthampton to transfer the tapes. I was there for a couple of hours. No here is the bummer.
It wasn't very fruitful. The studio's gear held up find but the tapes were "not ideal". The Santa Cruz show was labeled Santa Cruz 1, 2, 3. This could have either been 40 minutes of up to 24 tracks. I didn't know what to expect. They turned out to be an 8 channel recording on 3 tapes. Two major bummers. One being that there is NO BASS signal on it. The other being that at some point after this was recorded they seem to have been accidentally recorded onto. We put the tapes into three synced decks and digitally into a Mackie 24 track via lightpipe. We hit play. There is nothing. Of course I'm thinking, well there is likely 30 seconds of preroll. Then thinking, well they must be about to take the stage any second. Turns out there was 15 minutes of "blanking" on it. My best guess is that someone later put these three tapes into a 3 deck rig and started recording a pass of blanking (tape prep). Track 7 had a low 60hz buzz and others had VERY low noise. So it was audio, meaning not a playback tape malfunction. The tapes played back surprisingly clean and error free. They looked brand new. This means that for each tape 15 minutes was deleted. Meaning from the beginning, middle, and end of the show. MAJOR BUMMER!
Then for the GAMH #2 tape, it was the same setup but we're missing tape 1. So tape two starts with a cut off Rhythm-A-Ning. I can hear track bleed of a keyboard and after the song Brad introduced Marco Benevento but there is NO keyboard track to mix. After that there is only one more song. I think Dogs on Bikes. So we basically only got some song fragments. In a way there is really only one song that is mixable on all of this. The worst part is that I dropped $40 (which was a courtesy discount) for the studio time. Oh well. I was hoping for something more worthwhile but at least we now know...
Good work for trying though!!