Van Halen 20 July 1982 Knoxville, TN (open air mic/brand new to circulation)

Van Halen
20 July 1982
Venue: Knoxville Coliseum
Location: Knoxville, Tennessee
Source: Open-Air Microphone (Master)

Lineage: Maxell UDXL-I C-90 cassette > Nakamichi DR-1 (azimuth adjustment) > Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi HD > Audacity (24-96) > FLAC 6

Track Listing:

01 Romeo Delight
02 Unchained
03 Drum Solo
04 Dance The Night Away
05 Runnin’ With The Devil
06 Dave Talks
07 Where Have All The Good Times Gone!
08 Hang ‘Em High
09 Little Guitars
10 Bass Solo
11 Jamie’s Cryin’
12 Dave Acoustic Solo
13 Ice Cream Man
14 Somebody Get Me A Doctor (cut)
15 Cathedral
16 Secrets
17 Drum Solo II
18 Everybody Wants Some!!
19 Intruder
20 Pretty Woman
21 Guitar Solo
22 Bottoms Up!
23 Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love
24 The Full Bug

Notes:
Starting off with the fifth concert of the Diver Down tour, this show will be the first of many recordings that will be shared over the coming months, which were all made by Roy, the front-of-house sound engineer. Here we have a totally unheard, uncirculated open-mic recording, capturing the Van Halen concert in Knoxville during their Diver Down tour (Hide Your Sheep tour) in 1982. Not even an audience recording of this show has circulated previously. Due to being so early in the tour, this is one of very few recordings that documents this earlier setlist arrangement, which would soon be significantly reorganized sometime between July 27th and 30th. Also of note, is the very different arrangement for Mike’s bass solo, which would already be changed to the standard, better known 1982 bass solo for the next concert on July 22nd.

Basically what we have here is an “official audience recording”, recorded with an open mic right next to the soundboard / mixing desk. The first 10 seconds of this recording is actually directly from the soundboard, but Roy, the FOH engineer, quickly changes his inputs to record from the open mic instead. You can hear the transition between feeds seamlessly. Initially, the first 10 seconds were fed through the left channel only (silent right channel), which then jumped to the open mic being fed through the right channel only (silent left channel), then at 14 seconds starts being fed in proper stereo. This gives a bit of insight with how Roy was swapping his cables from the board feed to the mic feed, despite having already started recording. Before sharing this recording, we replaced the silent channels during the first 14 seconds by duplicating the audio from the alternate channels.

This is definitely a great recording, I’d recommend for all VH fans to listen to it, even if you were hoping for another soundboard recording. Don’t be fooled by the “Backstage” Open Air Mic from Toronto 1982 that was shared last year, which was overall pretty bad. Unlike Toronto, where both the soundboard was recorded while an open mic was also seemingly obscured elsewhere to record, this Knoxville show does not have a soundboard version (nor will the other six OAM shows coming later this year).

The first side of the 90 minute master tape runs out at the very end of Ice Cream Man, and while no songs are missing in between, it seems it took a while to realize to flip the tape because the second side starts by capturing only the last 1m44s of Somebody Get Me A Doctor. While this recording captures most of the remainder of concert, the tape ran out before being able to record the final encore featuring You Really Got Me and Happy Trails.

Huge thanks to those who significantly helped with the absurd pricetag that was required to liberate this VH collection, most of which would’ve been impossible to save otherwise.

Enjoy the music and be grateful we are able hear these special recordings. If you have uncirculated tapes, please consider sharing them before they end up forever lost to time.

http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-details.php?id=797554