ANNOUNCE Queen & Status Quo; 1985-07-13 Live Aid, Wembley Stadium, UK

Queen & Status Quo
Live Aid, Wembley Stadium, UK
13 July 1985
BBC Radio 1 FM Stereo live broadcast

Recorded by Owen Smith at:

44 Cumberworth Lane
Upper Cumberwortth
Huddersfield
West Yorkshire
HD8 8PD
United Kingdom

(Note I no longer live at that address so don't post anything there.)

Almost certainly receiving from Holme Moss transmitter only a few miles away.
Reception on wire loop 'T' aerial pinned to the back of the dresser.
Recorded using a 1970s Sony receiver and Sony 3 head top loading casette deck
using Chrome tape setting and Dolby B NR.

Master cassette transferred to CD-R by Brian's Wig in May 2012 using Technics
RS-A27 deck and presumably a sound card and computer.

CD-R ripped by Owen Smith using dBpoweramp in Secure mode with C2 Error
Pointers on RipNAS server.

Lineage:
FM Stereo > BASF Chromdioxid Extra II C90 > WAV > CD-R > WAV > FLAC level 5

Quality:
For a cassette recorded off FM radio, this is about the best audio quality
we're likely to get. It's a transfer of a Chrome master tape, well recorded
with good FM stereo reception, very rarely played and well stored.

However there are some faults:
i) The left channel is louder than the right virtually all the way through,
although it is more pronounced for the Status Quo tracks and Is This The World
We Created?
ii) There is some very high pitched whine on the Status Quo tracks. Possibly
this is the FM receiver and I may have adjusted the tuning knob between that
and Queen's performance.
iii) There is the occasional drop out here and there as is normal for nearly
thirty year old cassette tapes.

The feedback howl and roadies saying they can't hear anything on the spare
lead vocal mic is exactly how it was broadcast on the day, warts and all.


Track Listing
=============

Coldstream Guards:
01. Royal Salute

Status Quo:
02. Rockin' All Over The World
03. Caroline
04. Don't Waste My Time

Mel Smith & Griff Rhys Jones:
05. Woman In Belgium

Queen:
06. Bohemian Rhapsody
07. Radio Ga Ga
08. Ay-Oh
09. Hammer To Fall
10. Crazy Little Thing Called Love
11. We Will Rock You
12. We Are The Champions

Freddie Mercury & Brian May:
13. Is This The World We Created...?


If you think the track selection is a little odd, well that's what the 19 year
old version of myself recorded so that's what is on the tape.

My abiding memory of the day is being stunned by the quality of Freddie's
voice (having been to The Works tour at Birmingham NEC when it was rough), and
annoyed that the engineers spoiled Is This The World We Created.

Enjoy, and keep it lossless.

Owen Smith
13 July 2013

By the way this is the first torrent I've create here or elsewhere, so anything could go wrong. Let me know if it downloads OK, I am seeding.

Thanks for this one! Torrent not working tho...

It is working for someone, there is a peer uploading from me now (someone on Virgin Media running uTorrent 3.0 with 0.0% and uploading very slowing at 0.5kbps). My uTorrent shows 7 other peers are in the swarm, so it's not clear to me why they haven't connected.

You do need to have encrypted torrents allowed, my torrent server doesn't allow unecrypted (often called legacy) connections. But allowing encrypted connections has been the default for all torrent software for years so I doubt that's it.

EDIT: got two peers now, second one from Argentina running uTorrent 3.3.1. Still going very slowly, no idea why.

Thanks for this.. I remember taping Quo & Queen off the radio as an excited 14 year old kid.. That tape's long gone now mind.. Be interesting to hear the mix again as it was broadcasted on the day. Cheers.

[QUOTE] [b]OwenSmith wrote:[/b]

It is working for someone, there is a peer uploading from me now (someone on Virgin Media running uTorrent 3.0 with 0.0% and uploading very slowing at 0.5kbps). My uTorrent shows 7 other peers are in the swarm, so it's not clear to me why they haven't connected.

You do need to have encrypted torrents allowed, my torrent server doesn't allow unecrypted (often called legacy) connections. But allowing encrypted connections has been the default for all torrent software for years so I doubt that's it.

EDIT: got two peers now, second one from Argentina running uTorrent 3.3.1. Still going very slowly, no idea why.[/QUOTE]

It just started downloading, it took some time but working now, thanks ;)

Hearing the mix as it was live on the day is precisely why I have shared this, and why I do not consider it to be official product. All the releases since have been remixed and cleaned up, and the feedback howl and roadies talking into live mics by accident are gone.

I think the torrent is running slow because I'm running CUETools in a Verify operation across all my ripped CDs on the same server. It's really hammering the disc and the network but I'll just have to let it run to completion.

Thank you for this. Cheers.

Well some people seem to have completed download, uTorrent says there are 11 seeds and my share ratio is 1.084. Can someone confirm that they have it all, this is the first torrent I've created and uploaded anywhere.

28 years after..

thanks a lot for sharing this :-)

Yes, I only noticed half an hour ago that I posted this on Saturday 13 July, the same date and day of the week as the original concert. I'd love to claim this was planned, but it was in fact a complete accident. I had time over the last couple of weeks on holiday to sort out the tagging of the files etc. and just happened to post it today.

Even the weather is similar, it's been an absolute scorching hot day today in the UK (compared to the dismal UK summers over recent years anyway) and if I recall correctly it was lovely weather for Live Aid.

And here I am listening to The Show Must Go On from The 12" Collection as I type this. Coincidence?

[QUOTE] [b]MackMantilla wrote:[/b]

28 years after..

thanks a lot for sharing this :-)[/QUOTE]

People, please let me know what you think of this. I have nothing else of Queen to share, this plus a 4th source for Birmingham NEC on The Works tour which was shared last year is all I had.

I still can't get over the fact that I accidentally posted this on a Saturday 13th July. If I'd held this for a 30th Anniversary release it wouldn't have been as good because it wouldn't have been a Saturday, and the weather might have been rubbish.

I appreciate your share very much :-) I only had this source before [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xpLfBZGEdc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xpLfBZGEdc[/url]
And I do think yours is a lot better and cleaner. You can hear Freddie's vocals really well in WATC chorus.

[QUOTE] [b]Chief Mouse wrote:[/b]

I appreciate your share very much :-) I only had this source before [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xpLfBZGEdc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xpLfBZGEdc[/url]
And I do think yours is a lot better and cleaner. You can hear Freddie's vocals really well in WATC chorus.[/QUOTE]

The clarity is down to Brian's Wig doing a great transfer of the casette. When I play the tape, with Dolby B on it sounds wooly and muffled, and with Dolby B off it sounds very shrill and harsh. I don't know what he did when I sent him the tapes, but Brian's Wig's excellent transfer made this possible.