What Do You Guys Think About...

[Mike]

What do you guys think about creating polls for the shows / recordings that exist for 1986?

What I mean is I was just listening to the Live '86 disc so I could update the soundcheck info.
While updating the entry for this show I noticed Erik's blurb on the recording:

The audio from this show is taken from a VHS source, which is the only known recording of this show. The recording quality is petty bad, but still an early glimpse as the band.

http://janesaddiction.org/tour/tour_det ... tourID=769

I'm not posting this as a knock on Erik or anything like that.
I just think this recording isn't as bad as he thinks it is.

I personally prefer audience recordings to soundboard recordings.
I don't know if it's the added atmosphere in them or what but I do.

I know some some audience recordings are so poor I've given them an initial listen and then put them on the shelf never to be heard again unless I need to listen for research.

The bottom line is I thought we could as a group grade these recordings.
I think the best way to do it would be an ABC grade.

A = Excellent
B = Above average
C = Average
D = Below Average
F = Unlistenable

My thinking is we could put up a poll for a show with the above choices and the results would be a fairer representation of the sound of any given recording.

What do you guys think?

[helicine]

I dunno, I've got mixed feelings about it. On paper it sounds like a good idea, but unless you have a very limited set of people grading, anyone (regardless if the have or have heard the recording) can vote their whim.

I think if you had a set group of experienced traders who agree on a general baseline for grading, then it would work. That's not meant to be elitist, as I'm not even sure I should be in that group, but at least for a starting point I think it is necessary. I also think this is the type of thing that discussion during the voting process may be more beneficial.

Maybe if/when we get a lot more traffic and people back into the trading world, we could open voting on shows to adjust given recording grades. I'm not trying to shit on this idea, as I think it would be a good thing to do, but I think there are just too many possibilities for differing variables to affect the results. So at least to start, i think it should be done in a much more tightly controlled manner.

[Mike]

You make some very valid points Erik.
I guess I didn't think this all the way through and there are some that would vote that haven't even heard the show they're voting on.

I didn't even take that aspect into consideration.

I just read a couple posts in this section recently where some of the posters disagreed on the sound of a given recording and thought that as a collective we could democratically grade this stuff.

I mean some folks think Dave's tape of 11/13/86 sounds better than the boots and some myself included think the boots sound better than Dave's tape.

It's all very subjective but I think if the group of us that have been posting in this section were to put our heads together we could at the very least come to some kind of consensus on a grade for these shows.

One point you made that I want to touch on is people voting that haven't heard the recording.
I guess it would be an honor issue to a degree but there's no reason why we can't offer some of this stuff up for download so folks could vote intelligently.

I'd still like to hear what some of the other folks here think about this idea but we can for the time being at least put it on the back burner.

[Charles]

My 2 cents:

That Daves 4-track sounds like shit!! A lot of hisssssssss and the recording is very low. So you have to crank up the volume just to hear it. Doesn't even compare to the Live Too boot.
Mabe they have a better recording than I do? It's very possible. Mike, do you know who claimed this?

But NOTHING, in my 20+ years of JA trading, can stand up next to the Live Too bootleg as far as recordings go. There are some good 91' SNB shows, and a couple others from 88/89, but thats about it. Me myself, I'm a SNB guy.

Grading is good. But as Erik mentined, there are only a handfull that could give you an honest answer on the 86' shows. Your average JA trader doesn't have much of 86' You have to have somewhat of an JA illness/geek side to know about and grade those. ie: Gavin.

My opionion who is worthy: Gavin, Shawn, Sonny, Kevin, myself and you...mabe a couple others, but no one I have dealt with in the past. I say give it a try. It wont hurt. Then again, mabe I'm completely wrong?? Mabe tons of people have the rare 86' shows??....but I doubt it.

[intertwoven]

yeah, it might be easier to just start a "live recording grading" topic here, post a list of known recordings and assign a grade based on traders lists or whatever. And then if there's any particular ratings that stick out as being off to anyone, they can reply and give their reasoning and hopefully a consensus can be reached. Then, after it looks like we're all in agreement here, add the ratings into the "Show Information" sections of each entry in the show list. I was actually about to propose adding a "Recording Information" section that would be like a subsection of "Show Information" for stuff like this.

[Mike]

Charles and intertwoven, thanks both of you for your thoughts on this.
I'm sure we'll figure out a way to go about this that we can all be happy with.

It's good to know that we all at least think that some type of grading is a good idea.
When I created this section this is one of the aspects of the recordings i wanted to spend time on.

I still think some type of poll would be the easiest way to go about doing it but at the same time I see some of the concerns that have been addressed in this thread are valid.

We'll keep talking about it and get something figured out.