Allman Brothers – 1973.12.31 – Cow Palace 73 with Jerry Garcia – Cow Palace – San Francisco, CA – FM 4CDS A+ (Upgrade)

Disc 1:
(Set 1)
1. Wasted Words
2. Done Somebody Wrong
3. One Way Out
4. Stormy Monday
5. Midnight Rider
6. Blue Sky
7. In Memory of Elizabeth Reed
(Set 2)
8. Happy New Year!
9. Statesboro Blues

Disc 2:
1. Southbound
2. Come and Go Blues
3. Ramblin’ Man
4. Trouble No More
5. Jessica
6. Les Brers In A Minor >
7. Drums >
8. Les Brers In A Minor

Disc 3:
(Jerry Garcia, Bill Kreutzman & Boz Scaggs join up for the remainder of the show)
1. Whipping Post Jam >
2. Linda Lou / Mary Lou
3. Hideaway > You Upset Me
4. Bo Diddley > Mountain Jam > Bo Diddley

Disc 4:
1. Save My Life
2. Blues Jam
(Set 3)
3. You Don’t Love Me
4. Will The Circle Be Unbroken >
5. Mountain Jam

Here’s the deal… There are multiple versions of this 12/31/73 show in circulation. The most common (and the only one that I’ve seen) is supposed to be from the Pre FM reels (which were most likely damaged, keep reading). On the heavily circulated version there were numerous flaws, most were either digital noise or clipping. A new transfer was just done from a Reel To Reel FM Master. This new FM master did not have any of the flaws that were present on the common “Pre FM” version, but FM Master was of slightly lesser quality.

The solution? Small portions of the new FM master were spliced into the higher quality version when there was digital noise, clipping, etc. Those defects have now been eliminated. The splicing was done well, at most points it’s unnoticeable, but there were a couple of splices that didn’t line up perfectly, one of those would be the splice that provides the intro to Liz Reed. Either way, this show sounds much better than it did before, and it’s the best source I know of to be in circulation.

Here are some of the other edits that were done… There was digital noise in some of Bill Graham’s band intro, this was spliced in OK from the other copy. Various count-ins were slightly clipped, but are now spliced in seamlessly. These are usually when KSAN DJ’s talk, those short station ID’s have also been put back in. The KSAN announcer’s (Tom Donahue) count-in at New Year’s was similarly clipped, this has been restored, clipped notes at the beginning of Jessica have also been restored. There were many other additional edits, but you get the picture.

Enjoy!