1970-11-22: Too Early for a Gig: Casino Montreux, Montreux, Switzerland

PINK FLOYD
The Montreux 40th Anniversary Series
Too Early For A Gig (HRV CDR 037)

Montreux Casino, 22Nov70

Remastering by MOB
Quality Control and artwork by RonToon
Produced by Harvested Records

Disc One
1. Astronomy Domine
2. Fat Old Sun
3. Cymbaline
4. Atom Heart Mother
5. Embryo

Disc Two
1. Green Is The Colour
2. Careful With That Axe, Eugene
3. Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun
4. A Saucerful Of Secrets
5. Interstellar Overdrive

Sources:
CD1 tracks 1-4: "Smoking Blues" bootleg (FBR 001/002)
CD1 track 5 and CD2 tracks 1-4: "Reeling On Pink Floyd - Tape 24": claimed Master Reel > DAT(0)@48khz > WAV@48khz > SHN@48khz
CD2 track 5: Victor's 2009 transfer: 2 x Sennheiser MD-421 > Uher 4200 reel recorded at 19 ips > Audio CD > EAC > FLAC

This is the second of the two 1970 concerts at Montreux Casino. The first one (from 21Nov70) was released in November 2010 under the title "Too Late For Mind Expanding" (HRV CDR 036). This second performance, hastily added for the 22Nov70 afternoon at 2.30pm, is entitled "Too Early For A Gig" (HRV CDR 037).

While "Too Late For Mind Expanding" was mainly based on Victor's raw transfer from (some of) his mastertapes shared in November 2009, for this second date we only had Interstellar Overdrive from that transfer. Hopefully, four other tracks recorded by Victor on 22Nov70 surfaced in 1995 on the "Smoking Blues" bootleg, with superb sound quality despite the fact that this bootleg is probably sourced from a 1st or 2nd gen tape. For the rest of the show, we used an alternate source, from a different recorder: "Reeling On Pink Floyd - Tape 24".

The first four songs of the show were remastered from "Smoking Blues". Speed was corrected, slight EQ was applied and channel balance was adjusted. The main problem with "Smoking Blues" is the presence of annoying distortion during the loud parts, mainly in the right channel, probably due to saturation during the dubbing process of Victor's tape for the copy used by the bootleggers. All RoIOs using "Smoking Blues" or its tape source (like "Before The Fire") have that analogue saturation problem during the loud parts (this is not a digital saturation that could be corrected by clip restoration). On "Good Morning Folks" RoIO (from Inner Circle Production 1998), the distortion was partly attenuated, but is still noticeable and the sound quality was altered in the process. For the present Harvested release, the distortion has been manually attenuated with no impact on the clarity of the recording and we are very proud of the result, since this is the first time that you can enjoy the loud parts of Atom Heart Mother or Fat Old Sun without this saturation.

In order to have the most complete version of that concert, tunings and announcements that were cut on "Smoking Blues", were restored using the "Reeling Tape 24" source. A missing portion of Cymbaline, edited on "Smoking Blues" (probably to hide a tape flip) was restored for this release, again from the "Reeling Tape 24" source (from 04'10" to 04'55").

The five next songs, from Embryo to A Saucerful Of Secrets, were remastered from the "Reeling Tape 24" recording. Speed was corrected, and EQ was applied in order to bring more presence. The balance between channels needed some attention, especially for Embryo, where the left channel was suffering from severe fluctuations. It became better with Green Is the Colour, but the left channel remained the most problematic one, with more dropouts and tape flaws than the right channel. All these flaws were carefully corrected or attenuated. The tracks sourced from "Reeling Tape 24" are more hissy than the ones from "Smoking Blues", but the hiss could not be reduced without altering the clarity of the recording, so it was decided to leave it as it is. By the way, the presence of this hiss is also the sign that "Reeling Tape 24" could not be from the master, but more probably from a 1st or 2nd gen tape.

The last song, Interstellar Overdrive, was remastered from Victor's 2009 raw transfer, except the last 5 minutes that were missing on Victor's tape and were restored from "Reeling Tape 24". Even if "Reeling Tape 24" has a more complete version of Interstellar overdrive, the very last chords are missing. These were restored by taking another audience recording from that era for the very end of the song and the last applauses.

Enjoy !

MOB (March 11, 2012)
Harvested Records