Chicago Transit Authority
Fillmore West
San Francisco, CA.
August (15-17), 1969
Remastered April 4, 2006

Master Reel > DAT > CDR (HHB CD800) > Audio Cleaning Lab 2004 > CDR (NEC CD-RW NR-9100A) > EAC > FLAC level 8 > You! 

Disc One:
01. Poem 58 (10:37)
02. Freeform Intro (00:48) >
03. Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? (3:25)
04. It Better End Soon (9:01)
05. Someday (cuts) (2:38)
06. Questions 67 & 68 (5:17)
07. 25 Or 6 To 4 (7:16)
08. Beginnings (original version with dropout) (6:19)
09. Questions 67 & 68 (original version with dropout) (5:13)
10. The Road (original version with dropout) (3:19)

Disc Two:
01. Introduction (7:49)
02. Listen (4:43)
03. The Road (3:15)
04. I’m A Man (6:25)
05. South California Purples (6:10)
06. Beginnings (6:15)
07. Liberation (cuts) (16:57)

After numerous permutations making the internet rounds, here is what we hope will be the ultimate – and most complete - version of this earliest known soundboard recording of Chicago (Transit Authority). Recorded live at Bill Graham’s fabled Fillmore West in August of 1969, the reels were transferred to DAT in the early 1990’s before Graham’s untimely death. The original DAT had the 2 short sets completely mixed up as the reels were loaded incorrectly. (In fact, the last track on the 90 minute DAT is Someday which explains the sharp cut at the end of that song compared to the "old-school" sound of a reel as it reaches the end of its tether.) When the DAT was first transferred to CDR, presumably in the early 2000’s, it tracked poorly and the resulting copy which was leaked to the internet suffered from numerous obnoxious digital noise bursts (in addition to the original dropouts that occurred due to reel flips and other human errors). In any event, that’s our story and we’re sticking to it!

Thanks to the cooperation of a Sony ZA5ES DAT machine and a generous temporary loan of the original DAT tape, what you are about to download is a corrected version, devoid of digital artifacts! As noted above, a couple of songs are cut at the end, Someday and Liberation. Except for a slight fade at the end of Someday, these 2 tracks were left alone. We have taken the liberty to perform dexterous digital surgery on 3 other songs which suffered from original reel dropouts, specifically Beginnings, Questions 67 & 68 and The Road. All of the repairs required great effort and ingenuity, in some cases utilizing an audio version of a skin graft, borrowing snippets from other parts of the same song. Hopefully you will appreciate the new, “improved” version but if you are a purist who really “gets into” dead air, we’ve attached the original files, complete with dropouts, at the end of Disc 1. So, if you choose to, you may substitute tracks 8, 9 and 10 on the first disc for the doctored files. Everybody wins!

Notes from the OR:
D1,T6: patched at beginning
D2, T3: patched at end
D2, T4: crossfaded during drum/rhythm solo
D2, T6: patched in middle