My friend Dave gave me this cassette tape a couple of years ago. It's
a board mix of The
Nils playing at The Ritz in New York City back in 1986. At the
time there wasn't much Nils' stuff available on the Internet
so I decided to digitize the recording for fans. I
promptly loaded it into my old cassette deck and it ate the tape. It
sat there for a couple of years until I took the machine apart and
spliced the tape back together.
There is some dropout on tracks 14 and 15 where the tape got crumpled
by my deck. It's a board mix so the vocals are way out in front. I tried
to balance the recording a bit because most of the signal was in the right
channel but I think it was a stereo recording. I took out some midrange
to get the vocals to balance with the other instruments a bit better.
You can still hear what a great live band they were despite the low
fidelity of the recording. The drums and bass propel the songs forward and
Alex's voice is as powerful and fragile as always. The songs are some
of the best that come out of the Canadian punk rock scene.
Dave and I guessed at some of the song names. If you know the correct
names please send them to me.
Sadly
Alex Soria died a while back. I hope this gives you a glimpse of what
a great musician he was.
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