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The Fleshtones: February 27, 2014 The Grand Victory – Flac/MP3/Streaming

March 9, 2014

The last time I saw the Fleshtones was in the late 90s at the dear departed Brownies on Avenue A. At that point, I had seen the band more than a dozen times including a handful of times at Brownies itself. On this particular night though, the Fleshtones ended their memorable show in a unique fashion. As the last song came to a close the band unplugged their instruments, continued to play and walked through the crowd to the front of the venue and out the door to Avenue A. In front of Brownies waiting for the band was a flatbed truck onto which the band climbed and while they continued to play the truck moved south down the avenue and out of sight.

The Fleshtones live have always been a fun and imaginative band that not only celebrates the music but breaks down the fourth wall and involves the crowd in their show. All these years later, the band is still playing, recording and spreading their own version of garage rock around the world. A search for recent Fleshtones videos on youtube finds a bunch of stuff from Spain, Italy and Australia — the band remains big overseas if not remaining underground in the US. The Fleshtones are currently on tour in support of their new album Wheel Of Talent (Yep Roc) and we caught the opening night and CD release show at The Grand Victory. I entered the venue with a bit of trepidation that perhaps the Fleshtones were not quite as animated or energetic as I remember from the old days. But within seconds of the beginning of their set as Peter Zaremba walked the length of the bar, it became obvious that while the band is a little greyer and maybe a step slower, the Fleshtones still deliver the goods live. The set contained a healthy dose of Wheel material, but also welcome were some old nuggets including “Theme from The Vindicators (1980), and “The Way I Feel” from their first album Blast Off! (1978). The latter brought a dedication to the album’s producer Marty Thau who passed away a few weeks ago. But this was a night for celebration of the new album as Zaremba led intermittent human spinning wheels of talent to point to the next singer in the set. The result was a lengthy set (27 songs!) that was deserving of the Fleshtones of any era. The band may not have been escorted from the venue in a flatbed truck, but the infectious energy and enthusiasm is still very much present for the live Fleshtones.

I recorded this set by mounting the Sennheiser cards on the video projection shelf about 15 feet from the stage and mixed with a fine board feed. The room was instrument-heavy and the board is vocal heavy, but mixed together the results are superb. Enjoy!

Stream “I Was A Teenage Zombie”:

Download the Complete Show [MP3] / [FLAC]

Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct links or the files on other sites without our permission. Please respect our request.

Fleshtones
2014-02-27
The Grand Victory
Brooklyn, NY USA

Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + Audience Matrix

Soundboard + Sennheiser MKH-8040s > Edirol R-44 (Oade Concert Mod) > 24bit 48kHz wav file > Soundforge (level adjustments, set fades, downsample) > CDWave 1.95 > (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and Tagging via Foobar)

Recorded and Produced
by nyctaper

Setlist:
[Total Time 1:17:40]
01 [intro]
02 Hitsburg USA
03 What You’re Talking About
04 Feels Good To Feel
05 Let’s Go
06 Haunted Hipster
07 Dance With the Ghoulman
08 High Into the Sky
09 Theme from the Vindicators
10 Laugh It Off
11 You Give Me Nothing To Go On
12 Pretty Pretty Pretty
13 Destination Greenpoint USA
14 Llevo Un Tigre En Mi Guitar
15 Way Down South
16 Alright [Coastliners]
17 Day Tripper [Beatles]
18 Remember The Ramones
19 I Was a Teenage Zombie
20 You’re Tearing Me Apart
21 Its My Pride [The Guess Who]
22 My Kinda Lovin
23 I’m Alive
24 You Ain’t Never
25 The Way I Feel
26 [encore break]
27 Veo La Luz
28 It Is As It Was
29 Back Beat No. 1

If you download this recording from NYCTaper, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT The Fleshtones, follow them on Facebook, and purchase Wheel Of Talent from Yep Roc Records [HERE].

Mike Doughty: March 1, 2014 City Winery – FLAC/MP3/Streaming

March 7, 2014

By acidjack

Follow @acidjacknyc

[Photos by acidjack]

No matter how many times I see Mike Doughty in a year, he’s always got some kind of a new twist. Whether an epic two-plus hours of him breaking out Soul Coughing classics solo acoustic at City Winery, or his full-on all-Soul Coughing full-band set at Webster Hall, Doughty comes up with new ways to keep his loyal fan base interest. This City Winery performance reprised another of Doughty’s fan favorites, the “Question Jar”, which is more or less what it sounds like. Doughty plays some tunes, then he answers questions fans placed in a jar. Beyond learning Doughty’s tastes in ice cream toppings and Beatles, though, what we got here was another hour and a half of Doughty at his best, this time backed by cellist Andrew “Scrap” Livingston, who added depth to songs like “Looking At the Bottom of A Well” from Haughty Melodic.

A few Soul Coughing tunes were on the menu this time — probably that band’s two best-known hits, “Circles” and “Super Bon Bon” — but most of the show was dedicated to Doughty’s solo oeuvre. Some of those other highlights included “White Lexus”, “Down On the River By the Sugar Plant” and the night’s somewhat-unintentional highlight, “Busting Up A Starbucks”. Doughty’s a good-natured guy, but as we have seen in the past, he isn’t afraid to call out disrespectful fans, which he did mid-song. For the rest of us who were paying attention, it was pure comedy. I’m not sure when Doughty will come this way next, but when he does, I suspect he’ll have more tricks up his sleeve.

This recording is a straight soundboard feed, which makes sense given the relatively quite nature of the material. Engineer Patrick’s house mix is outstanding. Enjoy!

This NYCTaper recording is being hosted on the Live Music Archive. You can stream the entire show by clicking the song titles below or download it via the links provided.

Direct download of the entire show: [MP3] | [FLAC]

Mike Doughty
2014-03-01
City Winery
New York, NY USA

Download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by acidjack

Soundboard (engineer: Patrick)>Roland R-26>24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (compression)>Izotope Ozone 5 (effects, EQ)>Audacity 2.0.3 (fades, tracking, tagging, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 Unsingable Name
02 Super Bon Bon
03 27 Jennifers
04 [banter1]
05 Madeline and Nine
06 Down On the River By the Sugar Plant
07 The Only Answer
08 [banter2]
09 Circles
10 Sunken-Eyed Girl
11 [banter3]
12 Nectarine
13 White Lexus
14 Put It Down
15 Russell
16 [banter4]
17 Busting Up A Starbucks (w/ STFU)
18 Janine
19 I Hear the Bells
20 Looking at the World From the Bottom of A Well
21 [banter5]
22 Day By Day
23 [banter6]
24 Drunk On the Train to Chicago [Drink Me]
25 Put It Down

Personnel:
Mike Doughty – Guitar, vocals
Andrew “Scrap” Livingston – cello

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT Mike Doughty, visit his website, see him on tour this fall and buy his forthcoming record of Soul Coughing songs reimagined from PledgeMusic.

MV & EE: February 24, 2014 Baby’s All Right – FLAC/MP3/Streaming

March 6, 2014

By acidjack

Follow @acidjacknyc

[photo by acidjack]

Night two of MV & EE‘s Monday residencies at Baby’s All Right delivered on the same or an even higher level than the first. No longer stuck with a Monday of a holiday weekend for a time slot, the duo of Erika Elder and Matt Valentine played these two sets to a well-packed house. Set one found the pair getting things on track, with them sharing their cover of Pink Floyd’s “Green Is the Color” again, among other gems. But it was set two that really found the Vermont-based pair firing on all cylinders, playing perhaps the most concise yet diverse song cycle of the four that they shared during these New York performances. After a perfectly-timed “Tea Devil”, Valentine picked up the sitar to jam profusely on “Environments” which flowed into “Space Drums” — an audacious move considering MV & EE weren’t even playing with a drummer. They ended the night on “Lead Me To Vibration” from their latest LP, Shade Grown, leaving us with positive vibes we hope will carry over to their next visit.

As with the previous MV & EE recording from this year, this recording was made with a full multitrack digital fileset generously provided by house engineer Devin Foley, together with my Schoeps MK4V microphones at the stage lip. The sound quality is outstanding. Enjoy!

Stream “Green Is the Color” [Pink Floyd]

Stream “Tea Devil”

Download the complete show [MP3] | [FLAC]

MV & EE
2014-02-24
Baby’s All Right
Brooklyn, NY USA

Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded by Devin Foley and acidjack
Produced by acidjack

6-channel multitrack soundboard (Engineer: Devin Foley) + Schoeps MK5 (omni, stage lip, 2.5ft split)>KC5>CMC6>Pro Tools>8x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (various dynamics, compression, alignment, mixdown)>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, effects, stereo imaging, dynamics)>Audacity 2.0.3 (tracking, fades, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Set One
01 Wandering Nomad
02 Cold Rain
03 [banter]
04 Green Is the Color [Pink Floyd]>
05 Cocola Parabola>
06 Feelin’ Fine

Set Two
07 Tea Devil>
08 Environments>Space Drums
09 Lead Me to Vibration

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT MV & EE, visit their website, buy Shade Grown and other releases there, and visit Three Lobed Recordings for Fuzzweed and Country Stash and Woodsist for Space Homestead.

Vivian Girls: March 2, 2014 Baby’s All Right (Final Show!) – FLAC/MP3/Streaming

March 5, 2014

By acidjack

Follow @acidjacknyc

[Photos courtesy of P Squared Photography]

Oh, the Vivian Girls. You know you’ve been around awhile when you have witnessed the entire life cycle of a band like this. It wasn’t that long ago, to us, that our then-young site was covering an up-and-coming all-female band at places like the East Village Radio Fest and some extremely random ToddP venues. Pretty soon, like any good little band that could, the Vivs were playing spots like Bowery Ballroom. They were loved, yet not universally so, and maybe that’s as clear a sign as any that they mattered. As so eloquently summed up in Jenn Pelly’s comprehensive Pitchfork piece, if you didn’t like the band because they were “lo fi”, if you didn’t like the band because they weren’t avant-garde or music school enough, well, that’s on you. The Vivs wrote good songs. They wrote songs that sounded good in the spaces where their people were, in shitty apartments and on shitty rented PAs and, yes, on those shitty white iPhone headphones, by then ubiquitous. In their moment, as an all-female guitar band, they broke ceilings, too.

It’s fitting that this final show took place at the brand-spanking-new Baby’s All Right, a type of venue that would’ve been almost-unthinkable in the Williamsburg of 2007, when the Vivs hit the scene. Baby’s has a real liquor license, cool stage lights, a professional sound system. There’s a full-service restaurant in it that can (with 24 hours notice) serve you a whole pig. A bar that serves microbrews, makes a decent Old Fashioned. It’s a far cry from Monster Island Basement, or even Zebulon or Music Hall‘s old ghost, Northsix.

But what hasn’t changed is as important as what has. Like old times, the band played loud to a crowd where everyone knew the songs. People crowd surfed, and you could also find the band members out there too, Katy Goodman rocking out on the floor, surrounded by her peers (and maybe even a few curious synthpop refugees). This is one of those “last shows” that may give itself the lie, in the end, and that’s OK. These women aren’t quitting music — even, in a general sense, this band’s style of music. Goodman has La Sera (our most recent recording here), Cassie Ramone has The Babies (our best recording here), Ali Koehler has Upset. Goodman reminded us backstage that La Sera have a new record out this May on Hardly Art; look for a new song to debut this week and check out a preview YouTube clip here.

So enjoy these old songs, then, for what they are: A once-in-a-lifetime quality rendering of them, ramshackle sounds going out in style. The Girls were having fun, in front of friends as well as their parents. The lucky few got to see “Out For the Sun” descend into noise jam territory as the band members cavorted onstage and with the audience, taking the energy of the room to its peak. The three-song encore did everything it needed to send them off right: their cover of The Wipers‘ “Telepathic Love”, followed by “All The Time” straight into the night’s closer, “No”. Just under one hour and eighteen songs, and that was it. Balloons got popped, shots got drunk, there were goodbyes. It wasn’t exactly the end of an era, but it was an end, and a great one.

We are truly grateful to the Vivian Girls, Baby’s All Right engineer Devin Foley, and their entire team for allowing us the level of access we had to make this final recording. This is an 18-track digital multitrack recording from the soundboard that also includes two Naiant audience mics to capture the spirit of the crowd and sound of the room. It may still be “lo fi” by studio standards, but by the site’s standards, this is one for the ages. We hope you enjoy.

Stream “When I’m Gone”

Stream “Telepathic Love” [The Wipers]

Download the complete show: [MP3] | [FLAC]

Vivian Girls
2014-03-02
Baby’s All Right
Brooklyn, NY USA

Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded by Devin Foley, acidjack and nyctaper
Produced by acidjack

18-channel multitrack soundboard (Engineer: Devin Foley) + Naiant X-X (omni, stage lip, corners of stage)>Pro Tools>20x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (various dynamics, compression, alignment, mixdown)>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, effects, stereo imaging, dynamics)>Audacity 2.0.3 (tracking, fades, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks [Total Time 55:02]
01 Walking Alone At Night
02 I Have No Fun
03 Wild Eyes
04 I Heard You Say
05 [banter1]
06 The End
07 Death
08 Lake House
09 [banter2]
10 Sixteen Ways
11 [banter3]
12 I Believe In Nothing
13 Never See Me Again
14 When I’m Gone
15 [banter4]
16 Before I Start To Cry
17 Out For the Sun
18 [banter5]
19 Tell The World
20 [encore break]
21 Telepathic Love [The Wipers]
22 All The Time>
23 No

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT Vivian Girls by buying their records and supporting their next projects: La Sera, Upset and The Babies.

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks: February 26, 2014 Bowery Ballroom – FLAC / MP3 / Streaming Songs

March 3, 2014

By JFCB

[Photos by PSquared Photography]

Rising from the late-90’s hiatus of indie rock standard bearer Pavement, Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks picked up that flag and are still running like hell with it. Quite successfully, I might add. With a string of critically lauded albums under their belt, Malkmus and company are still the gold standard for the genre. On top of that, their live shows are spoken about in revered tones and on the must-see lists of stalwart fans. Having been a late devotee of Malkmus’ various projects, it seemed only fitting that my first Jicks concert be at the venue where they had their official live debut over a decade ago. The first of two sold out nights in the NYC-area, the band hit the stage with all cylinders firing, in great form, and with an eager crowd thrilled to hear every note. Playing the bulk of their celebrated new record, ‘Wig Out at Jagbags‘, they had plenty of room to cover songs from nearly all the previous albums, and even snuck in Pavement’s “Father to a Sister of Thought”. I’d say if there was one complaint I had by the end of the evening, it was that I hadn’t the foresight to get tickets for the following night. I guess there’s always next time.

In our regular spot next to the mixing board in the balcony, we would be hard pressed to have better sound. Dialed in beautifully, the mix was about as good as it gets at Bowery Ballroom and we were able to pull a wonderful recording with our microphones. Enjoy!

Stream “Lariat”:

Stream “Baby C’mon”:

Direct download of the complete show in MP3 [HERE]
Direct download of the complete show in FLAC [HERE]

If any of the links are no longer working, email nyctaper with a request for the download location of the files.

Follow Johnny Fried Chicken Boy on Twitter

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Bowery Ballroom
New York, NY, USA

Source: AUD > Milab VM-44 Links (cardioid) > Edirol R-44 (WAV @ 24-bit/48kHz)
Lineage: R-44 > PC > Adobe Audition (mixdown, downsample, dither, tracking) > WAV (16-bit/44.1kHz) > TLH (check/fix SBE’s, FLAC conversion) > FLAC ( level 8 )
Recorded and produced by: Johnny Fried Chicken Boy

SETLIST:
[Total time: 1:17:20]
01. [intro]
02. Chartjunk
03. Scattegories
04. Lariat
05. No One Is (As I Are Be)
06. Brain Gallop
07. Rumble at the Rainbo
08. Shibboleth
09. Cinnamon and Lesbians
10. Out of Reaches
11. [banter]
12. Tigers
13. [banter]
14. Vanessa from Queens
15. [banter]
16. The Janitor Revealed
17. Houston Hades
18. J Smoov
19. Baby C’mon
20. Surreal Teenagers
21. [encore break / banter]
22. Father to a Sister of Thought [Pavement]
23. Kite in a Closet

If you download this recording, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks, visit their website, visit their Facebook and MySpace pages, and purchase their official releases and merchandise [HERE], at Amazon and at iTunes.

NYCTaper to Cover Ba Da Bing / Northern Spy SXSW Showcase (w/ Special Guest Announcement)

March 3, 2014

By acidjack

We are very pleased and honored to announce that NYCTaper has been invited to cover the SXSW showcase of two of our favorite local labels, Northern Spy Records and Ba Da Bing Records, each of which are home to some of our favorite artists. Acidjack will be down at the festival covering various events all week, but we are particularly pleased that he will be partnering with Tiny Mix Tapes to live-stream this event, with recordings to be available on this site in the following week(s).

Joining the already-stellar lineup will be a very special guest, Sean Lennon‘s project The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger. Get there early to catch their set; they’ll be leading off the proceedings.

The full details and lineup (plus a few live sample tracks) are as follows:

Ba Da Bing / Northern Spy SXSW Showcase (Facebook invite)
Date: Friday, March 14, 2014
Location: The Palm Door, 401-A Sabine Street, Austin, TX
Start Time: 8pm

Lineup:
8pm: The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger

9pm: Cross Record

10pm: Cloud Becomes Your Hand

11pm: Slothrust

12am: Nymph

1am: DVA