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AMY WINEHOUSE
Rio De Janeiro 2011 [no label, 1CD]
Live at Summer Soul 2011, HSBC Arena, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; January 11, 2011. Passable audience recording.
This recording is rough - there is an echo; and there are many occasions where Amy Winehouse’s vocals are competing with/against the audience noise. And sometimes, the sound “bleeds”. But thanks to reader stickman with his labour of love, here is a show - drawn from various sources - for the Amy Winehouse fan. Given that the tracks are drawn from various sources, there is still a real consistency to the show/tracks.
stickman’s notes:
Offered here - exclusively for BigO and its readers - is the third disc of the five-disc Amy Winehouse - Summer Soul 2011 collection. It is the second concert at HSBC Arena and two nights before her appearance in Recife. It is the best represented of the five in terms of completeness lacking only Zalon Thompson’s two-song interlude. The concert times out at just less than 70 minutes. Aside from ‘Stagger Lee’, this show also features the other two ‘new’ covers, ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’ and ‘On the Outside (Looking In)’ along with most of Amy’s regular setlist repetoire. Interestingly, this set also has the series’ only known vocal performance of ‘Cherry’ which was used throughout as the musical accompanyment to the band introductions.
Not only this but, during the show, it is evident that Amy is ‘there’. While watching the videos, it is easy to be put off by her somewhat distracting stage presence. Listening, however, reveals what might otherwise be lost. Her mood - no doubt buoyed by the affectionate Brazilian audience - seems to be very good. There are glimpses, too, of the cheeky humour which, few would argue, was one of her great qualities.
THE PROJECT
What began as an idle thought turned into an off-and-on two year project. Upon becoming aware of the potential historical importance of these concerts, I began to seek out sources and found only YouTube clips. I started to experiment with the idea of using those in order to reconstruct (remix, equalize) the whole in the most integral manner possible despite the essential standalone/chaotic nature of those clips. The effort is largely successful but inevitable caveats persist.
The third concert uses 46 independent sources. The majority are mono, MPEG-4 AAC at about 224 kbps or less… Mixing was done on a per song basis with lead-in and lead-out retained to assist continuity. Mono tracks were timed and synched such that from 1 to 4 sources would contribute to any single song stereo mix-down. Due to the qualitative variability of the sources, equalization was applied in order to provide the most consistent concert-wide listening experience.
Despite some inconsistent on-line resources, the setlist was considered unknown. For this reason, internal cues were employed and reveal the accurate running order.
The excellent ‘Audacity’ sound editing software (audacity.sourceforge.net) by Dominic Mazzoni and the Audacity community was used for all phases of the work. It was running on an HP AMD A10 64-bit with Ubuntu 14.04LTS.
That’s about it.
I am glad I put the time into this; I am also glad that it is finished. In a perfect world, somebody out there (with more skill than I) will take on the impetus and do a far superior job of these shows. Until then, I invite you to sit back and enjoy listening to Amy’s final concerts; after all, when she left the stage on January 15, she never really ascended to the microphone again.
Are these Amy’s ‘best’ concerts? No, likely not. The stumbles and missed cues, voice issues and some forgotten lyrics are present. Such being the case, nothing is detracted from the fact that, for a moment, over the course of these five shows in January 2011, there is the glimpse of an evolving artist, of which, the audio is simply a document.
The story of Amy Winehouse has been written. Now it is for you and posterity to decide the fate of her legacy.
stickman
london, uk
september 2015
Thanks go to all the Brazilian concert-goers who posted their clips. Thanks also to Ubuntu, Audacity, GIMP, Inkscape and their respective communities for the tools. Thank-you to my friends who don’t bother telling me to ‘just STOP!’, because I would go on my bloody way regardless of their admonitions.
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Additional Notes: Amy Winehouse - Summer Soul 2011
7 nights, 5 concerts.
Brazil, January 2011.
Amy Winehouse and her band.
What more could the fans have asked for?
Following performances at ‘T in the Park’ and the ‘V Festival’ in the summer of 2008, Amy withdrew from her aggressive touring schedule to bide her health and, it was hoped, begin work on material for a new album. The drought continued through the following two years until announcement that she would headline the Brazilian ‘Summer Soul Festival’ in January 2011.
The five concerts were, historically, to be her last successful presentations followed only by a dubious appearance in Dubai for ‘Cycling on the Gulf’ on February 11 and the well publicized debacle at Kalemegdan Park in Belgrade on June 18.
The Brazilian shows were different. First, the audiences were large, supportive and enthusiastic which seemed very much to affect the stage energy. Second, the concerts were, in general, positively reviewed by attendees and the press. In the end, the impression was one of overall triumph and, on Amy’s arrival at Heathrow airport, the British press heralded ‘the return of Amy Winehouse!’ Indeed, she looked happy, healthy and confident.
The Brazilian shows have unfortunately not received the retrospective attention that they might merit. Despite extensive research, it appears that there are no high quality sound sources available from any of the shows. This five-CD collection is an attempt to fill that perceived gap.
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Click on the highlighted tracks to download the MP3s (224 kbps). As far as we can ascertain, these tracks have never been officially released on CD.
Please Do Not Hammer The Links. Due to the size of some of the files, please be very patient when downloading the tracks. It could be that the server was very busy. The tracks should still be around. Please try again later.
Kindly email us at mybigo@bigozine.com if you encounter persistent problems downloading the files. Also email us if you have any rarities you’d like to share with our readers.
Track 01. Intro (Shimmy Shimmy Ko Ko Bop) 0:54 (1.5MB)
Track 02. Just Friends 4:00 (6.7MB)
Track 03. Back To Black 4:25 (7.4MB)
Track 04. Tears Dry On Their Own 4:02 (6.8MB)
Track 05. Boulevard Of Broken Dreams 2:40 (4.5MB)
Track 06. On The Outside (Looking In) 3:15 (5.5MB)
Track 07. I Heard Love Is Blind 3:24 (5.7MB)
Track 08. Some Unholy War 3:13 (5.4MB)
Track 09. Wake Up Alone 4:47 (8.0MB)
Track 10. Stagger Lee 4:17 (7.2MB)
- Zalon Thompson (no source) - missing
- Zalon Thompson (no source) - missing
Track 11. Rehab 3:36 (6.0MB)
Track 12. Cherry/Band Introductions 12:03 (20.2MB)
Track 13. You Know I’m No Good 4:07 (6.9MB)
Track 14. Valerie 3:49 (6.4MB)
Track 15. You’re Wondering Now 3:00 (5.1MB)
Track 16. Love Is A Losing Game 3:26 (5.8MB)
Track 17. Me & Mr Jones/Outro (Know You Now) 4:11 (7.0MB)
69 mins
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