Acid Mothers Temple
March 23rd, 2008
The Rock N' Roll Hotel
Washington, D.C.

Source:
Roland Edirol R-09 (on-board mics, low cut on & AGC off, saved as 16 bit 44.1khz .WAV) > WaveLab (stereo channels swapped, normalized to 0dB, SL-1 Stereo Expander @ 100%) > CDWAV (tracks split and saved as .FLAC level 8 ) > foobar2000 (Tags + ReplayGain)

Location: House front-center

Taper: ZaPenguin (pjzyhfz02(AT)sneakemail.com or
http://db.etree.org/ZappaPenguin)

SOUND QUALITY: A- (a bit of fuzz along the bottom end, suprise surprise, but less threatening and in-your-face than the Balty show)

THE BAND:
Tsuyama Atsushi: monster bass, voice, cosmic joker
Higashi Hiroshi: synth, guitar, voice, dancin'king
Shimura Koji: drums, latino cool
Kawabata Makoto: guitar, voice, speed guru
Patrick: Kawabata's guitar

TRACK LIST:
CD1 [45:52]
01. Intro Jam > Douchebag [9:38]
02. La Novia (incl. La Le Lo) [17:45]
03. Dark Star [18:29]

CD2 [34:12]
01. Pink Lady Lemonade > Speed Guru [30:01]
02. crowd [1:03]
03. God Bless AMT [2:20]

Note: Entire show will fit on one 80 minute disc with five seconds over-burning.

MINI BIO:
"Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. (and subsequent offshoots) is a Japanese psychedelic band founded in 1995 by members of the Acid Mothers Temple soul-collective. The band is led by guitarist Kawabata Makoto and early in their career featured many musicians but by 2004 the line-up had coalesced with 4 core members and frequent vocal guests.

The band have a reputation for phenomenal live shows, and releasing frequent albums on a number of international record labels, as well as the Acid Mothers Temple family record label which was established in 1998 to document the activities of the whole collective."
- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia which every 14 year old has edited.

BAND PAGE:
http://www.acidmothers.com

SETLIST:
Intro jam > Douchebag, La Novia (incl. La Le Lo), Dark Star, Pink Lady Lemonade > Speed Guru E: God Bless the AMT

SHOW NOTES:
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: THE SHOW YOU'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR!!!

NOW we're fucking talking! After a show in Chapel Hill that was (for me) more about getting oriented and re-used to the Acid Mothering, and then a show in Balty that was, all things considered, a bit of an off-night, tonight was a show involving the Acid Mothers showing up, taking a few names, and splattering some cranial matter against the walls of the Hotel! SNAZZY!

I got to the venue with plenty of time to spare, only getting a little bit lost along the way (protip: Don't ever fucking do anything in D.C. that you did not come to D.C. to do. The infamous "third rail" of the proud and elegant D.C. Metrorail system is in fact a mind-reading device installed by the Reagan Administration, and secret agents within the upper echelon of the government do NOT like impulsive stops at a CVS Pharmacy along the way, and will do anything and everything in their power to get you horribly, horribly lost). Apparently, the band suffered the same fate as I, as they were nearly an hour behind schedule, and the touring-opener (Danava) was forced to play a very abbreviated set.

Fret not! The Acid Mothers played a damn full and damn fine set, complete with encore. The Hotel was nicely filled - not quite shoulder-to-shoulder, mind you (or maybe the audience was making sure that the taper had a bunch of space with which to conduct his odd mannerisms) - but the fans who did make the journey were most definitely into the music, as the shouts for Pink Lady Lemonade will attest to.

Okay, maybe "damn fine" isn't doing this show justice. Just like the show played last year, the Mothers of Acid were on FIRE tonight, absolutely shredding each and every song they played, with a minimum of dead air, and with ferocious professionalism. Dunno what the hell it is - maybe it's the venue, maybe it's the city, maybe it's the potholes littering the streets, or maybe it's just the will of Big Government, but the Acid Mothers seem to bring a special can of Ass Kick for the shows here.

Oh, and best of all, unlike last year's show, this time around I didn't do anything retarded with the gear, and the result is a very very listenable - not perfect, mind you, but very very listenable - experience from start to finish. Dig that long-anticipated Pink Lady Lemonade, clocking in at nearly thirty minutes and deserving of each and every one, complete with a maniacal three-step guitar solo that climaxed in the guitar being hung from the business end of a projector-screen, which proceeded to lower enough that at least one audience member was able to rip off a few fretwork explosions of his own. SICK!

RECORDING NOTES:
A bit of distortion along the lower end. Nothing to cry about. For some reason this recording turned out VERY loud - I was almost worried that I had used a hard gain instead of normalization when I saw the resulting waveform. Rest assured that no extra distortion was added during the mastering process.

REQUESTS & REMINDERS:
Do not sell this recording. Do not buy this recording. Do not sell this recording, then buy it from yourself. When planning your day in D.C., please do us all a favor, and dictate your thoughts in a firm, clear voice, with your head pointed in the direction of the closest subway line.

Torrented by the taper: ZaPenguin

email - pjzyhfz02(AT)sneakemail.com
web - http://db.etree.org/zappapenguin (always woefully out of date)

Band page: http://www.acidmothers.com