Audio 23 March 1994 - Richfield Coliseum, Richfield, Ohio [Audience]

[Rush Archives]

Downloads:​

• A Farewell To Richfield
• Everyday Glory

Track Listing:​

01 - Intro​

02 - Dreamline​

03 - The Spirit Of Radio​

04 - The Analog Kid​

05 - Cold Fire​

06 - Time Stand Still​

07 - Nobody's Hero​

08 - Roll The Bones​

09 - Animate​

10 - Stick It Out​

11 - Double Agent​

12 - Limelight​

13 - Mystic Rhythms​

14 - Closer To The Heart​

15 - Show Don't Tell​

16 - Leave That Thing Alone​

17 - The Rhythm Method (Drum Solo)​

18 - The Trees​

19 - Xanadu​

20 - Hemispheres: Prelude​

21 - Tom Sawyer​

22 - Force Ten​

23 - YYZ​

24 - Cygnus X-1 (Outro)​

Notes:​

• none yet

Preview:​

COMING SOON​

 

[blue_goo]

I was the original taper of the recording used on both "A Farewell to Richfield" and "Everyday Glory". I remember casually trading out CDR copies of this show with one or two people on alt.music.rush back in the late 90's, so that's how this would've started circulating.

I was positioned on a mezzanine close to Geddy's stage corner, near one of the FX speakers.

I used the following gear:
Aiwa CM-T7 mic > Sony TCS-430 > Maxell UR120s (master)

I couldn't flip the tape fast enough and lost the start of 'Limelight'. Fortunately that was the only major glitch and the recording came out better than it had any reason to be, considering the horrendous acoustics of the Richfield Coliseum. The TCS-430 was really just a dictation recorder. It had no manual level settings and couldn't do high bias tape, but I got really lucky with the outcome.

Fun facts:
-- At this show, Richfield police were heavily frisking people going in to the venue and they found the battery pack for my Aiwa mic-- I had neglected to shove it down the front of my pants with the recorder and blank tapes (it was getting crowded down there). The cop felt the bulge in my jacket, then freaked out and demanded to know "What the hell is this this?!" as I pulled the Aiwa pack out of my jacket pocket. I flipped the power slider and a red light came on, and I had a moment of inspiration: "Officer, this is the remote to my car alarm." The cop's expression softened as he nodded and let me enter the venue without a second thought. For a brief moment, "A Farewell to Richfield" and "Everyday Glory" were in deep jeopardy!

-- My very first time taping Rush was at the Richfield Coliseum in November 1991 with a micro cassette recorder. Yes, you read that correctly: a micro cassette recorder. The recording sounded like Rush playing live in a blizzard during an alien invasion at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. In my defense, I was young and didn't have the first clue about the basics of live taping. Though the quality was nightmarish, I was so proud of myself and enjoyed the hell out of that tape at the time. Paz's Attic would've probably buried that one somewhere out in Paz's Toxic Waste Dump. Lucky for you all, I never traded that abomination out. You're welcome.

-- I taped Rush in Cleveland two more times. November '96 on T4E, very creatively titled as "Dave's Source 2" (uploaded to Dimeadozen in 2023). That show was done on a Sony WM-D3 and didn't go as smoothly as the '94 show, but I've grown to appreciate it. I taped Rush again in Cleveland in 2002 on a Sony DAT and titled that one "Dave's Source 4" (also uploaded to Dimeadozen in 2023) -- this was, by far, the best Rush live recording I'd ever done. It was so good that I knew I'd never equal or exceed it, so I never taped Rush again.


EDIT... more info:
-- The lineage for my transfer of the Richfield '94 show to CDR at the time was very basic and low-tech. The playback deck was one of those Sony dual well units from circa 1991 that had Dolby B/C/HX-Pro. I ran it with noise reduction 'off' through an equalizer that I don't remember much about. A Yamaha, I think? I tweaked endlessly to come up with an EQ curve that smoothed out the shrillness and some of the deficiencies of my recording gear. Next in the chain was a Phillips standalone CDR burner deck.

-- "Everyday Glory" sounds a lot like an untouched version of the CDRs I traded out. "A Farewell to Richfield" sounds like it was given a nice, subtle EQ sprucing-up by Digital Reproductions.

 

[rocky chains]

This is a great post Dave (assume you are the Dave of Dave's Sources), thanks for sharing your stories. So neat to hear some of the detail behind the tapes from an intrepid taper. If you don't mind a question - what was the motivation to tape the shows? Was it solely for Rush that you took on the role of smuggler and secret agent? Or did you tape other bands too and it was more just something that you were interested in doing as a general matter?

"The recording sounded like Rush playing live in a blizzard during an alien invasion at the bottom of the Grand Canyon" -- that is quite humorous and creative!

Cheers!

PS - shout out for The Expanse

 

[blue_goo]

Rocky,
I initially started taping Rush because I saw bootleg silver CDs of the band at local record stores, but they were either rip-offs of the official live Rush VHS tapes, or common re-boots of older shows (like Pinkpop, or the Agora broadcasts). I never saw any those "protection gap" live CDs from a more contemporary Rush tour back then and I wasn't plugged into any Rush trading circles, so I figured I'd have to make my own recordings.

Also, I had started visiting record conventions around northeast Ohio in the early '90s and saw all these guys selling live tapes they'd recorded themselves, but never any Rush from the Cleveland area. I met this hippie-ish older guy who frequented the convention circuit and had taped a lot of shows around Pittsburgh. I was a dumb early 20-something, but he was friendly and gave great advice on the basics of live taping. He was probably my Obi-Wan -- he was the great master of live taping -- though, in this story I'm probably less of a Skywalker and more of a Jar Jar. (edit: I'm pretty sure a couple of Hippie-ish Older Guy's live tapes of Rush from Pittsburgh are here on the Archives.)

I was also into live taping death metal bands in the early/mid '90s. My gear was getting upgraded and death metal shows gave me lots of practice with taping. As some of those bands' classic lineups began to lose important members, I realized I had captured little pieces of the bands' histories. With Rush it was a similar motivation: to capture that moment in time.