Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin & Paco De Lucia Saturday Night In San Francisco 180g Impex Edition

• Format: 1x 12" LP
  
• Condition: New, in original packaging
• Label: IMPEX
  
• Year of publication: 2022

• Special features:   180g audiophile IMPEX press, gatefold cover, explicit lyrics
  

Shipping takes place in special record boxes.

The dispatch takes place in special record boxes.

There is probably no one who is enthusiastic about guitar music who doesn't know the legendary and widely re-released album "Friday Night in San Francisoco". Three guitar virtuosos play live and with stunning acoustic qualities. What hardly anyone knew: There were two more concerts on the following Saturday with the same line-up, which were also recorded, but where an almost completely different set was played. In 1980, a master was created from the two concerts with countless cuts, but it was never published.

It was Al Di Meola's management who remembered that this tape still existed, but disappointment was soon to set in. The master had not been stored well and was actually unsuitable. At least the producer from Impex Records from the USA didn't want to be disappointed by this. Despite everything, what we heard was simply too good and one thing was immediately clear: Saturday night was even better than the legendary Friday.

Instead of using the original master, they went back to the analog 16-track recordings of the actual concerts. These weren't in great condition either, but could be refinished at Skywalker Sound in Marine County, California. Then the task was to generate a mix from the two concerts with even more perfect beats and Katsu Naito & Roy Hendrickson were hired for this. The former had already edited Friday Night and still knew exactly what he had paid attention to more than 40 years ago. Al di Meola was again the driving force here. The perfectionist simply doesn't like mistakes, while John McLauglin sees it as part of the live atmosphere.

The new mix came to Bernie Grundman, who made two different lacquer cuts. Once with transistor technology on the editing system and once with tube technology. Since the Impex production had already decided on the purely analogue route by then, it is hardly surprising that the tube variant was chosen for the “right” sound.
At Al di Meola's request, the LP cover had to be purple and a metallic paint was used and an elaborate manual was also created.

It is pressed at RTI in Los Angeles on 180g vinyl. A side note: Only the IMPEX version of this release was created in purely analogue form and was mastered without intermediate digitization. They insisted on absolute quality and therefore edited with a lot of dynamism. The second side of the LP therefore only contains two pieces, while others were also willing to limit the dynamics to accommodate three.