(HD) Big Country - Peace Concert in East Berlin - June 18, 1988 + bonus encore (Upscaled DVD)

The East Berlin Peace Concert, now in stunning Full HD with thanks to Alan Anbari.

For those fans for whom the keyboards were a major distraction, you will be well pleased with this. Alan has put so much work into this concert to bring it up to specs that match official live BC recordings and has written some fascinating notes which you can find below:

"For the entire show, I swapped the channels of guitars (only) because the East German engineers seemed to have gotten this backwards.
Bruce is now left and some center (mostly center on mandolin); Stuart is center and some right. This is the typical panning for a live Big Country release. It also matches what we see on the screen. I assume the original high-quality audio comes from a stereo videotape or an FM broadcast, and not a multi-track master. Nothing I have done is a "remix." I merely corrected some balance issues (like the guitar panning) and other little glitches, like feedback squeals and where the volume of the synths was too loud.

Here are specific notes for each song, with the final audio using the DVD 5.1 soundtrack downmixed to stereo:

00:00 Restless Natives
(Removed feedback when Stuart starts playing his main guitar theme in the intro)
04:54 Where the Rose Is Sown
(Removed feedback during the last verse)
10:01 Wonderland
(Put the synths much lower in the mix. (They sort of sound percussive now and don't cover Stuart's solo.) Removed feedback during the last chorus)
15:32 Look Away
(Synths lower in the mix (but higher than Wonderland). Removed feedback from first chorus)
20:55 Just a Shadow
(I left the (piano-like) keyboards in the intro alone, but I mixed the sparkly synth sounds later in the song much lower)
27:58 Steeltown
(Synths a little lower in the mix. Removed feedback during the choruses)
34:21 Porrohman
(The general piano-like vibe works OK, so there's no point in messing with the overall sound just to change the mix. I made only very slight adjustments instead)
43:41 The Seer
(I tried to rebalance the synth parts, which are actually integral here, because Josh Phillips is filling in for Kate Bush. AI thought some of the synth parts were a real human voice, so that's cool! I think this mix is more in line with what they were going for, rather than having the synth so high in the mix that it obviously is not an actual vocalist)
50:31 Chance
(Lowered the volume of the repeated synth note in Stuart's spoken intro. It seems to me that the original engineers started turning up the volume on the keyboards at some point earlier in the show (in Wonderland?). By this point, with little else going on except the drums and synth, they turned it up even higher. They obviously thought it was the most important instrument in The Seer too)
58:53 In a Big Country
(Lowered the level of the sparkly synth bits, which mostly were covering Bruce's parts)
1:05:34 Fields of Fire
(Lowered the synth levels throughout. Removed feedback in the opening verse)
1:13:37 Honky Tonk Woman
(No changes. (The bluesy piano sound works, so I left it alone))
1:18:36 Harvest Home (audio only)
(From the FM radio broadcast, with new EQing and balance to improve the fidelity. Still images taken from earlier in the show)

Without AI's ability to separate instruments, I would not have been able to make most of these changes, such as independently adjusting the synth volume at various spots, swapping the channels of the guitars, and removing squeals of feedback. I know Tony Butler preferred to present their live shows just as they were when he prepared the official releases, and I appreciate that goal. The original DVD and CD are the ultimate source for this concert. I merely tried to use the tools available now to fix some of the most obvious problems, which had nothing to do with how the group performed on that day, but only arose from how they were recorded."

TB's own notes on the show:
"To play behind what used to be the Iron Curtain, in a place where people were shot if they tried to cross a dividing line was to say the least, a buzz. In the changing political climate of the late Eighties, to be invited to play in front of a festival crowd who were enjoying a newly acquired freedom that we take so much for granted was always going to be special. I also seem to remember that Michael Jackson was playing in the West of Berlin at the same time but felt our gig was the bigger occasion. This recording by a German TV company illustrates the sense of the occasion.

German live music television has always had a good reputation for its sound quality, and this recording is no different. As usual with BC live recordings, there are no over dubs or any post production, it is what it was on the day, from start to finish. Enjoy."

Tony Butler - June 2001