The concert last night at Terminal 5 was a musical extravaganza. The sold-out crowd was treated to four solid hours of outstanding music from three superb bands which was highlighted by the start-to-finish performance of Built to Spill‘s Perfect From Now On. The seminal album was released in early 1997 as Built to Spill‘s first CD with Warner and first consistently excellent album. Although the release did boost the profile of the band, Perfect From Now On was not an immediate breakthrough — the album has grown in popularity and influence over the last decade. As a matter of illustration, we saw Built to Spill live at a not-sold-out show at the relatively tiny Maxwell’s in 1998 (a recording is in the nyctaper archives).
The performance at Terminal 5 was well-executed and workmanlike, although not thoroughly inspired. In particular, in recent years “Randy Described Eternity” has become a bell weather for the strength of the show — we saw an eighteen-minute blistering version at Irving Plaza in 2006 (also in the nyctaper archives). Last night, “Randy” was much closer to the album version. The highlight of Perfect last night was the album’s strong finish of “Kicked It in the Sun” and “Untrustable”. But it was the “bonus” material where the band let loose and shined, ironically performing consecutively the first three numbers of Perfect’s follow-up album, the arguably stronger Keep It Like a Secret. “Carry The Zero” devolved into complete mayhem, as members of Dinosaur Jr. and Meat Puppets joined in a bizarre jam session with liberal instrument-switching and stage antics.
While the music onstage was almost universally excellent, the most unfortunate aspect of the show last night was the crowd — a Friday night midtown crowd with no apparent interest in anything other than being drunk, loud and obnoxious. It was one of the worst out of control groups we have experienced in three decades of concert-going.
We recorded from the rear of the floor directly in front of the drink rail. The sound in the venue was not optimal and some of the crowd behavior is evident on the recording. While this is not one of our best efforts, under the circumstances the quality of this recording is quite acceptable. Enjoy!
Dinosaur Jr. and Meat Puppets were also recorded and will be featured on nyctaper in the coming days.
Direct download of MP3 files (HERE)
Download the Complete show in FLAC [HERE].
Built to Spill
2008-09-26
Terminal 5
New York, NY USA
Digital Master Audience Recording
Recorded from Floor – Dead Center 100 Feet from Stage
Neumann KM-150’s > Monster Cable > Apogee Mini-Me > digital coax > M-Audio Microtrack 24/96 > 24bit 48kHz wav > Soundforge 8.0 (level adjustments, downsample 16/44) > CD Wave 1.75 > Flac Frontend (level 7, align sector boundaries) > flac
Recorded and Produced by nyctaper
2008-09-27
Setlist:
[total time 1:35:15]
01 Randy Described Eternity
02 I Would Hurt a Fly
03 Stop the Show
04 Made-Up Dreams
05 Velvet Waltz
06 Out of Site
07 Kicked It in the Sun
08 Untrustable/Part 2 (About Someone Else)
09 The Plan
10 Center of the Universe
11 Carry The Zero
12 Jam
If you email nyctaper for access to this recording, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Built to Spill, visit their website, and purchase their Official Releases directly from the Built to Spill Store at their website [HERE].
big fan would love to have,
thx
This was a great show! I traveled from Wisconsin to see it. Took a girl who had never been to new york or seen built to spill. She loved it! “Carry the Zero” was just plain sick at this show. Would love to have access.
I was at this show. If anyone is wondering where Doug’s guitar goes in the middle of Made Up Dreams, his strap broke. He tried for a minute to fix it, then had someone try to help him out, but he didn’t have a backup guitar and since he held his strap on with duck tape, the guy trying to help him out couldn’t just put a new strap on.
Nice memory after 11 years.