The Golder's Green concert 13 Sept 1973 is believed to have been broadcast on US radio station KBFH as an SQ matrix encoded quadraphonic broadcast. Does anyone have an off air FM recording of this concert recorded from KBFH or have another recordng of this version? A number of existing releases have been checked and found to be plain stereo, including Pop Spectactular (hardly surprising since the BBC Transcriptiom Disc label clearly makes no mention of SQ encoding).
If this can be found I have a contact that can decode it back into quadraphonic. This is one of only two Queen items potentially in legacy 1970s quadraphonic formats so it wouldbe great to find this.
The details I have now been supplied with are:
* Queen & Randy Newman March 2, 1975, 60 Minutes (SQ) Reel to Reel
(Queen-Golders Green Hippodrome, London, September 13, 1973, Sound
quality is Excellent - although the instruments are a bit louder
than the vocals.)
So that would be 2 March 1975 broadcast date I'm assuming. A bit strange being 18 months after the concert.
The Real Wizard wrote:
There was a lot of discussion about this a couple years back. Check the existing threads:
link
With regard to the existing bootlegs of this concert:
Anything that's been remastered or worse merged from multiple sources is no good. Unless the processing carefully preserved phase information the SQ encoding will have been destroyed. For example EMI CD re-masters of classical stuff use zero phase EQ so usually their SQ encoding survives, whereas many other labels can't be bothered and the SQ encoding is destroyed.
The single source uploads have all been checked and found to be not SQ encoded. That's Pop Spectacular and Queen Will Be Crowned. Also BBC transcription discs clearly said SQ if they were encoded and the label for the Pop Spectacular disc says no such thing.
So we're looking for a new source. Someone that recorded the KBFH quad broadcast off air, or a copy of that pre-FM in some form. It may have been re-mixed specially for KBFH since they did a lot of quadraphonic broadcasts (alas their warehouse of tapes all went up in flames, I forgot the date of the fire but it's a huge loss).
OwenSmith wrote:
The details I have now been supplied with are:
* Queen & Randy Newman March 2, 1975, 60 Minutes (SQ) Reel to Reel
So that would be 2 March 1975 broadcast date I'm assuming. A bit strange being 18 months after the concert.
Yeah, totally. But good old FM radio in the 70s was pretty daring at times, so they could really do what they wanted when they wanted.
Thanks for narrowing down the date. I knew there was a March broadcast, as it was advertised a couple times in a Cleveland paper: link
OwenSmith wrote:
PS. sorry for the delay in replying, queenzone should have emailed me when you replied but as usual it didn't.
Ha, no worries !
By contrast, nearly every time I make a post to QZ I have to uncheck the subscribe option. Now and again I forget and I wake up to a plethora of emails..
OwenSmith wrote:
So we're looking for a new source. Someone that recorded the KBFH quad broadcast off air, or a copy of that pre-FM in some form. It may have been re-mixed specially for KBFH since they did a lot of quadraphonic broadcasts (alas their warehouse of tapes all went up in flames, I forgot the date of the fire but it's a huge loss).
Cool, you sure know your stuff.
Even if someone did tape this off the radio, it will be ever so hard to locate because there are countless bootlegs of this material and thus a swath of cassettes that have gone around over the years.
The Real Wizard wrote:
Yeah, totally. But good old FM radio in the 70s was pretty daring at times, so they could really do what they wanted when they wanted.
Thanks for narrowing down the date. I knew there was a March broadcast, as it was advertised a couple times in a Cleveland paper:
link
Note that in your listings clipping: link
at 7pm WDOK is broadcasting "show-case in quad". Is there any way to find out what they broadcast in quadraphonic that night?
Also, your listing shows WMMS broadcasting the Queen stuff. Do you know what relationship that station had with KFBH which is the station this broadcast was supposedly in quad from?
OwenSmith wrote:
at 7pm WDOK is broadcasting "show-case in quad". Is there any way to find out what they broadcast in quadraphonic that night?
That's a huge stretch. No idea, man.
Also, your listing shows WMMS broadcasting the Queen stuff. Do you know what relationship that station had with KFBH which is the station this broadcast was supposedly in quad from?
Before we even answer that, what's your source for the info on the KFBH broadcast? Was it also broadcast on that station on 3-2-75?
One of the Golders Green threads here contains a decoded quad version for download, so maybe we already do have the recording from a 1975 broadcast, or even the pre-FM.
The queenzone thread with the quad decode was taken from one of the multi source remasters, which is always prone to damaging the SQ encoding. The majority of that multi source remaster is from Pop Spectacular which is taken from a BBC transcription disc. The BBC disc label as found in online pictures does not say it is in quad of any flavour, it just says Stereo. Also my quad contact has downloaded and SQ decoded Pop Spectacular (the single source copy) and he says it doesn't sound SQ encoded to him and there isn't as much phase difference as you'd expect. It is however a matter of experience, but this chap has done development of computer based decoding processes for quadraphonic matrixes so he has considerable experience and has released over 330 decodings of quadraphonic albums to DVD-Audio.
My sources for this being in quad on KFBH are i) KFBH were really serious about quad in the 1970s so them broadcasting it is at least plausible, ii) my quad contact who asked me if I had the KFBH broadcast or could find it, iii) this online discography of quad radio broadcasts (no idea where they got the info before you ask): link
Search for Queen on that page.
I realise some of this is a bit tenuous and may not work out. But if no effort is made to track this stuff down and try to quadraphonic decode it, there's even less chance of it ever seeing the light of day.
OwenSmith wrote:
But if no effort is made to track this stuff down and try to quadraphonic decode it, there's even less chance of it ever seeing the light of day.
Yes, indeed.
Excellent detective work so far. Hope you're able to track it down some day !
