King Biscuit Flower Hour

[DuncanS]

I have lot's of those advertisements for KBFH shows. Most are copies from Rolling Stone Magazine and maybe 2 or 3 from Circus Magazine .

From Frampton's Camel / Humble Pie (26th August 1973 ), to Foreigner ( 15th May 1979 ).

2 Pics and list attached.
A "Q" beside the date indicates the Advert mentions the show was in quadraphonic .

I've never heard any, so what were the KBFH Quad shows like, wrap round or just ambience in the rears?

 

[quadaholic]

I have lot's of those advertisements for KBFH shows. Most are copies from Rolling Stone Magazine and maybe 2 or 3 from Circus Magazine .

From Frampton's Camel / Humble Pie (26th August 1973 ), to Foreigner ( 15th May 1979 ).

2 Pics and list attached.
A "Q" beside the date indicates the Advert mentions the show was in quadraphonic .

Your notes are SO NEAT AND ORGANIZED! Mine wouldn't look nearly as good. It would be great to see these integrated into Marks listings as well as the eclipse site if they haven't been all ready.

I've never heard any, so what were the KBFH Quad shows like, wrap round or just ambience in the rears?

It's a little of both. Some of the earlier shows tend to be the ones that are a little more adventurous. There are definitely plenty that seem to be just audience mics in the back channels. The BBC mixes tend to be a little more interesting, as are Ken Raseks, who did a lot of radio mixes in the Chicago area, but that's off topic.

 

[fizzywiggs41]

I've never heard any, so what were the KBFH Quad shows like, wrap round or just ambience in the rears?

Duncan

Well they never broadcast any King Biscuit Flower Hour shows (knowingly) in my City , and ......
I never had the chance to actually hear any back in the 70's mainly because it was later that I found out they were broadcast in SQ quad.

But I did , recently manage to hear a couple of conversions , and for the most part the rears are , well tepid.
By comparison the BBC Quad transmissions (H , HJ , SQ?) etc , including those from Transcription Services are far and away... much better for quad surround.

I'm told that there are a few exceptions for good quad mixes from KBFH namely ; The Stones in Brussels , and ELP at Anaheim, California .

Now I'm thinking that there are both of those shows available on line somewhere . And of course there are others as well.

 

[fizzywiggs41]

Your notes are SO NEAT AND ORGANIZED! Mine wouldn't look nearly as good. It would be great to see these integrated into Marks listings as well as the eclipse site if they haven't been all ready.


Fizzy's reply :
Oh I dunno , I thought they tended to get a bit messy . But that's the best I can do with what I have.

I think eclipse has my Biscuit notes as far as I can remember ...when I last checked that site .

BTW , did you manage to figure out if your lp's of "Rock Around The World" were in SQ ?

 

[marcb]

I've never heard any, so what were the KBFH Quad shows like, wrap round or just ambience in the rears?

Generally they’re audience with some room ambiance in the rears.

I never understand what QQ folks expect from most live recordings. I want something which resembles a live performance. The best way to do that with most live acts is...putting room ambiance and audience in the rears.

 

[J. PUPSTER]

Generally they’re audience with some room ambiance in the rears.

I never understand what QQ folks expect from most live recordings. I want something which resembles a live performance. The best way to do that with most live acts is...putting room ambiance and audience in the rears.

Yes, that's about right; a few exceptions out there, like some (more modern) Scheiner stuff etc.; but they're not grounded in reality from a live audience perspective IMO.
https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/forums/threads/live-concerts-with-discrete-surround.21879/

 

[quadaholic]

Generally they’re audience with some room ambiance in the rears.

I never understand what QQ folks expect from most live recordings. I want something which resembles a live performance. The best way to do that with most live acts is...putting room ambiance and audience in the rears.

I agree that it's totally fine for the mix to just make you feel more like you are "in the room", but at the same time it's cool when you find something that really comes to life when you split up the four channels. It's kind of like finding the "easter eggs" in a dvd.

 

[Quadmon]

Golly gosh... it was long ago when a few radio stations in listening distance of the various places I resided would air the King Biscuit Flour Hour. I do not remember any mention of quad though that term was not on my "radar" at the time. I was aware of quad but its expense and having to haul stuff around so often during frequent moves led to my sticking to stereo until the early 1990s. That was when I saw the Masterworks brand basic quad receiver in the thrift store and sighting it the memories of quad returned and curiosity led to my buying it and the quest began.

Found this:

"The concerts were usually recorded with a mobile recording truck, then mixed and edited for broadcast on the show within a few weeks. In the 1970s, the show was sent to participating radio stations on reel-to-reel tape. Some shows were recorded and mixed in both stereo and quadraphonic. In 1980, D.I.R. began using the LP format, producing the show on a three-sided, two record set. The first show on compact disc was a live retrospective of the Rolling Stones broadcast on September 27, 1987. By the year 2000, King Biscuit was using CD-R media to distribute the show. These tapes, records or compact discs were accompanied by a cue sheet which gave the disc jockey a written guideline of the content and length of each segment of the program."

King Biscuit Flower Hour - Wikipedia


Anybody ever see a quad King Biscuit Flour Hour tape or LP? I wonder if there are any floating around out there? Anybody ever hear a quad broadcast of the show?

Another little piece of the quad era that was not recorded well for history.

I recall listening to the KBFH shows on WMMS in Cleveland. I had an HK 100+ receiver. Mostly I remember they did sound very “live”. WMMS also joined up with another FM station for a few broadcasts where one station did front channels and the other sent out the rear channels. Obviously you needed two receivers to hear this so I wasn’t able to experience it.

 

[marcb]

I agree that it's totally fine for the mix to just make you feel more like you are "in the room", but at the same time it's cool when you find something that really comes to life when you split up the four channels. It's kind of like finding the "easter eggs" in a dvd.

I just don’t get the whole “it’s cool” for things to be in the rears where it sounds nothing the experience of the actual performance. To me “cool” is getting lost and feeling like I’m at the show, not listening to my speakers.

 

[par4ken]

I just don’t get the whole “it’s cool” for things to be in the rears where it sounds nothing the experience of the actual performance. To me “cool” is getting lost and feeling like I’m at the show, not listening to my speakers.

With live recordings they can be the in the audience type, or the on the stage type. Most here like the on stage, in the middle of the band type of recording. Personally if it sounds cool I could care less if it replicates the actual performance.
On the other hand some of the best results with Dyna type decoding was with live stereo recordings in which much of the ambiance and crowd would emanate from the rears. My point is that both approaches are valid.

 

[quadaholic]

I just don’t get the whole “it’s cool” for things to be in the rears where it sounds nothing the experience of the actual performance. To me “cool” is getting lost and feeling like I’m at the show, not listening to my speakers.

to each his own.

 

[Simplepast Presentperfect]

Someday I hope the Gryphon set turns up. The yes show is easy to find, but outside of the remix that's at the Vault, this one seems to have disappeared. The idea of someone playing a bassoon in front of 9000 plus Yes fans waiting for Roundabout must have been a truly unique experience.

The advertisement lists about 150 FM stations. I assume that they were sent tapes (sponsored by 3M Scotch ) to be broadcast at the same time. Quite an expense, but if so it would be reasonable to expect that from that number of copies some survived to this day.

 

[Simplepast Presentperfect]

The advertisement lists about 150 FM stations. I assume that they were sent tapes (sponsored by 3M Scotch ) to be broadcast at the same time. Quite an expense, but if so it would be reasonable to expect that from that number of copies some survived to this day.

By the way, a huge fan of Gryphon here, but contrary to the typical fan I don't fancy their early medieval period, but rather the last three albums. Most atypically I am very partial to the last one, Treason which apparently is a tongue in cheek reference to anticipated dissapointment by fans at the further change in musical direction. Paraphrasing ELO's mission statement "pick up where the Beatles left off", Treason could be aptly described as Gryphon picking up where Yes left off (to me Yes started their steep descent from their glorious prog days with Going for the One)... Spring song sounds uncanningly Yes.

 

[quicksrt]

When you are in the front row at a good live concert, and the band is cranked up loud, you do not hear any ambience in your rear anything. You are totally absorbed and into the sound that is all around you and coming from in front. It is no longer a front vs rear sound experience, from my perspective.

Allman's at the Fillmore East is another one that is "you are on-stage and playing with the band" type of arrangement.

 

[marcb]

When you are in the front row at a good live concert, and the band is cranked up loud, you do not hear any ambience in your rear anything. You are totally absorbed and into the sound that is all around you and coming from in front. It is no longer a front vs rear sound experience, from my perspective.

This is simply incorrect. Your brain ignores it because it combines the eyes and ears, but it’s there. If you were put into a music hall which absorbed all sound reflection, you would immediately notice something very artificial and wrong.

Record something in a live room on your phone. You’ll find a lot more room ambiance and reverberation than you think there was.

 

[quadaholic]

This is simply incorrect. Your brain ignores it because it combines the eyes and ears, but it’s there. If you were put into a music hall which absorbed all sound reflection, you would immediately notice something very artificial and wrong.

Record something in a live room on your phone. You’ll find a lot more room ambiance and reverberation than you think there was.

It really is amazing how the brain can filter out unwanted sounds and concentrate on whatever it decides to. It's also a bit of a challenge when you start putting mikes on things and want to get the same sound through the mikes that your brain hears in the room.

 

[Zephead2112]

A slight diversion (apologies) but has anyone ever come across this?

https://www.discogs.com/release/5725025-Robert-Plant-The-King-Biscuit-Flower-Hour
I have the original KBFH LP's of RP's 1983 Texas broadcast but I've been looking for this Reel to Reel tape for years with no luck whatsover. I have no details about the content but I'm guessing that it's probably a 'Best Of The Biscuit' release containing some of the 1983(84) broadcast. It says it was recorded at The Riverfront Coliseum in 1985 but I'm not sure that this is correct.

I'd love to find a copy for sale.

The 1983 US tour was superb, featuring the extremely underrated Robbie Blunt and of course Mr Phil Collins on thunderous drums. The man himself was in fine voice too. I wish I'd been able to see a show on the UK tour but I'd just joined the Royal Navy, making that impossible.

Many thanks!

 

[quicksrt]

This is simply incorrect. Your brain ignores it because it combines the eyes and ears, but it’s there. If you were put into a music hall which absorbed all sound reflection, you would immediately notice something very artificial and wrong.

Record something in a live room on your phone. You’ll find a lot more room ambiance and reverberation than you think there was.

No, it is not that the brain ignores it, it's that the live band is loud enough (so loud) that it drowns out the ambience. I guess you've never seen the Stones, Who, Zeppelin, or even the Replacments from up front. Trust me, it's loud.

Think of it like this, when something small drops to the floor in a noisy warehouse you don't hear a thing, and a phone would likely not pick it up either. But in a very quiet room, it would make more of an impression both the ears and to the phone recording it.

 

[fizzywiggs41]

I recall listening to the KBFH shows on WMMS in Cleveland. I had an HK 100+ receiver. Mostly I remember they did sound very “live”. WMMS also joined up with another FM station for a few broadcasts where one station did front channels and the other sent out the rear channels. Obviously you needed two receivers to hear this so I wasn’t able to experience it.

From what I've read about various quad broadcasting , WMMS was playing quad encoded programs , mostly rock , from very early on.
In fact if I remember correctly, they were supplied SQ encoded shows such as King Crimson , recorded 'Live at the Agora' ...as early as 1973.
Additionally The Agora shows were pretty much premiered for WMMS FM Cleveland in the early years. Mr. Loconti , manager of Cleveland 's Agency Recording Studios a full Concert Studio with 'Live At The Agora' post production facilities upstairs (I think?) , recorded quad concerts for various artists albums and had both SQ and QS . I know they did some album recording for Patti Smith and Savoy Brown , and others.

That's apart of what was supplied by King Biscuit shows.
So I guess you could say if you lived in OHIO ...there were a plethora of quad broadcasting..(both SQ and if a station requested... QS as well.)

 

[quadaholic]

A slight diversion (apologies) but has anyone ever come across this?

https://www.discogs.com/release/5725025-Robert-Plant-The-King-Biscuit-Flower-Hour
I have the original KBFH LP's of RP's 1983 Texas broadcast but I've been looking for this Reel to Reel tape for years with no luck whatsover. I have no details about the content but I'm guessing that it's probably a 'Best Of The Biscuit' release containing some of the 1983(84) broadcast. It says it was recorded at The Riverfront Coliseum in 1985 but I'm not sure that this is correct.

I'd love to find a copy for sale.

The 1983 US tour was superb, featuring the extremely underrated Robbie Blunt and of course Mr Phil Collins on thunderous drums. The man himself was in fine voice too. I wish I'd been able to see a show on the UK tour but I'd just joined the Royal Navy, making that impossible.

Many thanks!

Zephead, I am presently working at an archive project in Boston that has a fair amount of reels left over from Boston area stations. In my list I'm showing a 10 inch reel of Robert Plant, but it might just be an interview. I expect to stop by there in the next few days, and I'll grab the reel and check it out. It's not for sale but at least I can confirm what is or isn't on it. I saw this tour as well and also remember the initial broadcast. I don't think there was anything other than the Texas show, so the mention of Riverfront coliseum might be another example of King Biscuit mentioning incorrect venues.