We generally trust ToddP’s recommendations with bands. So when he sent out a glowing email about the Minneapolis band Best Friends Forever and their first two NYC concerts tonight and tomorrow, we made our best effort to catch this band, despite our previous engagement. We arrived at The Tank several songs into their set, and set up as quickly as possible. We managed to catch the final 20 minutes of the Best Friends Forever set, which was about two-thirds of its total length.
What became quite apparent when we took time to watch the band was that besides the obvious infectious pop songs, Best Friends Forever are also quite excellent musicians. Bri sings and plays both keys and guitar fluently while Joe keeps a frenetic beat. We were particularly impressed with Jess’s fret work on the bass, which is displayed quite prominently on the last track.
We recorded from the rear area of the room, which was only about 30 feet from the stage. The sound quality in this room was quite good and the recording is a very nice capture of this excellent band. Enjoy!
Best Friends Forever perform again tonight (8/20) at Death By Audio — catch them before they go back home!
Direct download of MP3 files (HERE)
Download the Partial Recording in FLAC [HERE].
Best Friends Forever
2008-08-19 The Tank
New York, NY USA
Digital Master Audience Recording
Recorded from 30 Feet
Neumann KM-150’s (AK-50 Hypercardiod Capsules) > Monster XLR Cables Apogee Minime >digital coaxial > M-Audio Microtrack > 24bit 48kHz wav file > Soundforge 8.0 (set fades, leveladjustments, dither, downsample) > CD Wave 1.95 (tracking) > Flac Frontend (level 7, align sector boundaries) > flac
Recorded and Produced
by nyctaper
2008-08-19
Setlist:
[total time 17:24]
Partial Set
06 Tracks
If you email nyctaper for access to this recording, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Best Friends Forever, visit their MySpace page, and purchase their official releases at the Plan-It-X Records Website [HERE].
Egads, what a difference a day makes. The band sounded great tonight too, when I could hear them. This was one of the worst crowds I’ve ever been in — dozens of bros shouting at each other over the music. The back half of the room was literally filled with people paying no attention whatsoever to the music and just yelling and cackling as loud as they could. I broke down the mics half-way through the set after a bunch of jerkoffs were yelling jokes to each other right in front of the mics. Ugh.
NYC Taper: They’ll be back in New york October, 22 2008 at CMJ After the Jump @the Knitting Factory
Would be great if you could record a complete session then. I live in Europe so for now the only way to experienco some BFF is through guys like you! And from those impressions and their cd’s I ve really fallen in love with this band!
ps. I made a youtube out of one of your recordings with a link to this site. hope you don’t mind ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlDh1v_hDW0&NR=1 )
That’s great news, since I was going to be recording at that CMJ show anyway.