The Smiths - 1986-10-23 - Kilburn National Ballroom - London England

OtherWisdom

Member
Remaster by Christian Silas

Direct download

General steps taken:
  • Extracted audio/video footage from all VOB files with Handbrake v. 1.1.0
  • Split show into twenty one segments with Davinci Resolve v. 14 in order to address all the differing audio sources
  • Applied the least aggressive video stabilization to each segment with Davinci Resolve v. 14
  • Remixed each audio segment using Davinci Resolve v. 14
  • Concatenated (i.e. rejoined) all segments back into one file with MKVToolNix v. 23.0.0
  • Finished final encoding with Handbrake v. 1.1.0
Duration: 1:23:27 Bit Rate: 2.81 Mbps

Video Tracks: H.264, 866 × 714, 24.995 fps, 2.48 Mbps

Audio Tracks: MPEG-4 Audio stereo, 48 kHz, 330 kbps

See below for source origin and information.

National Ballroom, Kilburn - 23 October 1986

The Queen Is Dead
Panic
I Want The One I Can't Have
Vicar In A Tutu
There Is A Light That Never Goes Out
Ask
(Marie's The Name) His Latest Flame/Rusholme Ruffians
Frankly, Mr. Shankly
The Boy With The Thorn In His Side
What She Said (with Rubber Ring intro and outro)
Is It Really So Strange?
Never Had No One Ever
Cemetry Gates
London
Meat Is Murder
I Know It's Over
/The Draize Train
/How Soon Is Now?
//Still Ill
//Bigmouth Strikes Again

I'd never been to the National Ballroom in Kilburn before, so I had no idea what to expect with security and hall layout. But I wanted to try and film all 3 of the London dates, so I brought my camera along anyway. I went up to Paul's place in Kentish Town first, and we went across to Kilburn together. The hall was on the High Road with the entrance on a corner. It looked like an old concert hall. We hung around outside on the street, watching as the people filed in to see what security was like. It didn't look good. Everyone was having to show their tickets as they first entered the building and then they were frisked. We waited for quite some time, hoping that somehow things might get a bit more lax as we got closer to show-time. Eventually there was no time left, so we made our move. I handed in my ticket and flashed my out-of-date Access all areas pass .... and they waved me through without blinking. I'm starting to believe this pass will always work ... I shouldn't worry so much about it.

But now there's not much time before the show starts and I've no idea where I can film from. I go upstairs ... the balcony seems the best bet. Its a big D shaped balcony, with seats all around. Most people are seated, but there are already a number of people loitering at the edge of the balcony. There's an aisle right down the middle and some space down at the front. The lights go down and the Romeo & Juliet intro starts up. We dash down the aisle to the front and squeeze into a space. I'm almost dead center ... pretty much perfect position to film, although there's nowhere to easily rest the camera, and there's a fair bit of Jostling. No time to worry ... out comes the camera and on it goes. I start filming just as the into to the Queen Is Dead Starts up.

It's not a bad film. A bit shaky at the start and there's a lot more of just straight shots of Morrissey. The filming position I had gave me a great view, but wasn't ideal for handling the camera - it wasn't always easy to see the viewfinder without the picture shaking, so I tended to set up a shot and try and keep the camera steady for as long as I could. This meant that the film doesn't follow the action as well as some of the other ones.

The show itself was good. London dates are always a bit funny, as there's an element of 'come on impress us' in the crowd, which you don't tend to get out of the capital. So the crowd tend to hold back a little. But as Johnny said ... there hasn't been a bad Smiths gig, and this one has its moments. Morrissey is on good form with his in between song comments ... and there's a great version of I Know Its over.

I've used 4 different audio sources. The main one is the Rank album, which I've used in its entirety. Then I used the Radio broadcast (most recent Satellite radio version), followed by an audience recording (DJ version) and a few little bits of missing crowd audio from the video soundtrack itself.

This was filmed on a Canovision 8VM-E1.
 
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