Newbie Festive 50 Question

[jake]

Hi folks

As it's that time of the year, I have a question about the available festive 50 recordings. 

My Peel listening gradually tailed off during the 1990s, but nevertheless I always tried to catch the festive 50 every year if I was in the UK over Xmas.

Thanks mainly this group I have managed to download a lot of files containing partial or complete festive 50 sections of the relevant shows, but in most cases it's not possible to just listen to each countdown as it was broadcast. 

For example, I think I have the complete radio version of the 1990 festive 50 scattered across various files, but different recordings of the same countdown have different bits missing, some files are better quality than others, some just have the countdowns while the others include them in longer recordings of the relevant shows, all need varying degrees of pitch adjustment etc....

With a little patience and audio tweaking it should be possible to piece together a complete version of each of the 4 festive 50 countdowns from that year (50-39, 38-27, 26-25, 14-1) pretty much as they were broadcast, in decent quality. And that's something I'd love to have available for repeated listening - not just 1990 of course, but all of the festive 50s.

Having sorted through my peel collection I was thinking of making it my new year's resolution to reconstruct every festive 50 countdown that I've got in this way. In most cases there are radio recordings available from more than one source, which could be enhanced a bit and joined together to produce the most complete and best sounding version of each countdown. I also want to produce remastered versions of the phantom 50 and the all time 50 from 2000. 

So forgive me if I'm being a total noob, but I'd just like to ask - has anyone already done this? :-)

I had a go at a "best of" version of the first festive 50 countdown from 1990, just to see how much work would be involved and how good the end product would be. 

I'm quite satisfied with the results. The audio quality isn't perfect but I reckon it's good enough for repeated listening and certainly an improvement on what I had before. It's exactly as broadcast with all Peel's links intact.

Festive 50 countdown 22/12/1990 (50-39) in a single mp3 file. 

Download here:

http://rapidshare.com/files/324590210/1990ffpart1_50-39_.rar

Tracklist:

50 INSPIRAL CARPETS - BEAST INSIDE
49 THE PIXIES - DIG FOR FIRE
48 THE PIXIES - ALISON
47 THE FARM - GROOVY TRAIN
46 THE FARM - STEPPING STONE
45 BASTRO - NOTHING SPECIAL
44 DEEE-LITE - GROOVE IS IN THE HEART
43 TEENAGE FANCLUB - GOD KNOWS IT'S TRUE
42 THE ORB - LITTLE FLUFFY CLOUDS
41 THE FALL - CHICAGO NOW
40 SONIC YOUTH - KOOL THING
39 THE WEDDING PRESENT - DALLIANCE

See if you can spot the joins.... :-) 

Rgs

Jake