Santana
13 May 68 [date uncertain]
Avalon Ballroom
San Francisco, CA

CD#1: 1st set 47:04 01 Waiting 8:21 02 Treat 10:22 03 Evil Ways 8:45 04 Shades of Time 3:40 05 > Savor 5:03 06 > Jingo 10:19 07 announcer & crowd noise 0:41

CD#2: 2nd set 40:29 01 announcer intro & crowd noise 0:10 02 Persuasion 3:47 03 Soul Sacrifice 3:31 04 > drums 11:36 05 > Soul Sacrifice 20:44 06 talk: "Don't Go No Further..." & crowd noise 0:38

Carlos Santana: Guitar, Percussion, Vocals
Marcus Malone: Percussion
David Brown: Bass
Gregg Rolie: Keyboards, Vocals
Bob "Doc" Livingston: Drums

Probable lineage: 1st or 2nd gen. copy of off-air reel master.
KMPX-FM > ? > Sony SLH-180 7 inch Dolby B 1/4 track reel recorded at 3.75 ips (Tandberg 9241XD) > Macintosh with DigiDesign AudioMedia III card > Pro Tools > AIFF > FLAC level 8 (created with xACT with sector boundaries verified). md5 file created with checkSUM+.

Nothing has been edited out or eq'd, but there were lots of dropouts - mostly in just one of the channels. Since this is basically a mono mix, the dropouts and levels changes could be almost entirely eliminated - either by pasting in from the good channel or with manual level adjustments in Pro Tools. The finished result is very clean sounding overall. This version is less cut up and better sound quality than the previous version seeded.

The date is uncertain because of the announcer comments at the end of the first set about 5 nights coming up of benefit shows with 5 bands a night. There is a poster for Santana playing at the Avalon from May 17-19, which would be the last 3 nights of that "5 day benefit" if the date of the 13th was correct but only 2 bands and no benefit are listed on the poster for the May 17-19 run. Some people think that this is from that May 17-19 run at the Avalon, but that comment about the benefit still messes things up, because there are Avalon posters with the typical 2 bands and no mention of any benefits all the way up to the end of November 1968. After Chet Helms "Family Dog" stopped booking shows at the Avalon another promoter, "Soundproof", put on more shows at The Avalon starting in January 1969. Jerry Abram's Headlights are mentioned also by the announcer, and they did do both the '68 Family Dog Avalon shows and the '69 Soundproof shows.

Based upon all of this information,  the probable date is close to the end of Chet Helms run at the Avalon. The posters for weekly Friday thru Sunday shows stopped at the end of November, 1968. Soundproof took over in January '69, so it's possible that this show here is really from December, 1968. That would be when benefits to keep Chet Helms going at The Avalon would have been probable. The announcer doesn't say that the benefit shows would be for any other cause, and the regular scheduled weekend shows apparently had ended, so there might have been time for a 5 day wednesday thru Sunday benefit before the Family Dog completely stopped doing shows at the Avalon... blah blah blah . . . . . does it really matter anyway. It's great music; Raw Santana before Carlos went guru-ish.

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