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Unofficial Recordings by Other Artists |
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As one may perceive from this brief history, I am not incredibly interested in expanding this collection, and I'm really only creating this page out of a personal need for cataloging all of my bootlegs. I have not heavily researched the dates and venues provided for these shows, so I can't promise you that they will always be correct; nor have I provided as extensive an amount of details on each show (thank God!) as to sound quality, errors, cuts, and the like. Caveat emptor: there may be small problems, such as momentary scratches or skips, on these discs that are not noted below; but I hope I have noted any major problems. Track times and track names are there and are as correct as I could make them with what information and sources I chose to employ. As always, see anything you like, email me. All boots are in chronological order, and separated by artist (alphabetically). Dates are UK style--that is, day/month/year. The first and largest chunk of the page is devoted to audio shows, which are all on CD-R; following that is a small collection of video, on multiple formats as noted in the specific entry. Click on the text links below to scroll directly to the entry you're interested in.
Page Summary and Menu JON ANDERSON THE BEACH
BOYS DAVID BOWIE BOB DYLAN I.Q. PAUL MCCARTNEY PINK FLOYD THE POLICE QUEEN R.E.M. RADIOHEAD RUSH SONIC YOUTH BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN STEELY DAN YES
ON VIDEO: DAVID
BOWIE PINK FLOYD THE POLICE QUEEN YES
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1975-1982 01 The Sky and His Shadow (37:47) Type/Quality: Studio/Very Good-Good Comments: This is a collection of demo recordings from the lead singer of Yes. Most are short ideas for songs, rather sparely recorded with basic instrumentation. The sound is a bit washed out. I liked most of the ideas on 07-12. The core of the disc though is the title track, a mammoth instrumental which actually seems to be three different pieces based around the same hovering, gentle theme. The song I think is an improvisation, which is how it lasts so long--the first chunk is about 18 or 19 minutes, then the sound fades out, and then there are two more sections, each about ten minutes long. It is not just an improvisation, though, and it's not a live recording, because there are voices on there which seem to have been added later on--weird, low talking or noises in the first section for a little bit, then a guy speaking French in the later sections. It's interesting, and a kind of nice ambient type of thing, but it doesn't really go anywhere for all of its 38 minutes. The song "Hear It" (not one of my favorites on here) ended up on Jon's album Song of Seven. I wasn't able to track down any other of these titles on his solo albums as listed on Amazon.com, so it's possible that most of them are b-sides or never got past the demo stage.
6/8/82 1 Announcer Intro (1:07) Type/Quality: Radio/Very Good Comments: At the Convention Center in Asbury Park, New Jersey (my favorite state), this gig is presented in what is probably partial form by the King Biscuit Flower Hour. The announcer (who introduces the show and pops in now and then as it goes on) keeps describing it as "Jon Anderson and Animation," Animation being Jon's backup band when he went on tour solo (the announcer lists the personnel at one point)--and/or the name of his new solo album. As you can see I know very little about Jon's solo career--even less than I know about the many lineup changes in Yes at around this period. A lot of this stuff comes from old Yes, though, so it's fairly familiar to me. Jon does a lot of medleys featuring snatches from many classics. The artwork I received with this show calls the first track "Olias Opening," obviously referring to Jon's Olias of Sunhillow solo album--but the actual CD has nothing of the sort, only the radio announcer introducing the show. In fact the tracking on the artwork (like almost all bootleg artwork inserts) is basically useless; though it generally gets the lineup right, the tracking and track times are totally inaccurate. As for the show, the quality is nice (though the keyboards sound wavery and sickly a bit), and it's nice to hear some good Yes songs, but Jon's backup band cannot hold a candle to Steve Howe, Rick Wakeman, et al. As for the non-Yes, Jon Anderson material, it is fairly predictable if you are familiar with Jon's fruity tendencies. Apparently the song "The Friends of Mr. Cairo" is actually the title track of an album Jon made with Vangelis, and sounds like a confused review of The Maltese Falcon.
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Comments: I have these two albums on a DVD-R as compressed FLAC files. I know nothing about them as I have not taken the time to convert them to audio and listen. However, if you want them I will trade them. I believe I can provide more details if asked.
see David Bowie video 5/6/71 (and various BBC sessions) BBC 5/6/71 Other BBC Type/Quality: Studio/Good-Very Good Comments: A rather hefty collection of various Bowie BBC sessions (or possibly studio alternate takes), many of them a tad repetitious. The first nine tracks all seem to come from a musical TV show hosted by John Lennon (if I'm not mistaken--actually I think I'm betraying some severe ignorance here, and the host is actually John Peel, but who knows?). I am sadly ignorant even of Bowie's easily available studio material--though I admire him greatly--so I have no idea how unique or common these songs are. But it's interesting to hear the host (whoever he may be) talk about Bowie's band line-up, and it's also very cool to hear two Velvet Underground covers by Bowie (tracks 15-16). I love VU and it's very nice to hear Bowie's take on these classic numbers. Of course the Ziggy Stardust album is a classic, so it's nice to hear these alternate versions of songs from that album. After track 9 the sources vary a lot, so naturally the quality is not consistent, but generally it's quite listenable.
various, including: BBC 4/10/71; Old Grey Whistle Test 8/2/72; Marquee Club 18-20/10/73; Hammersmith Odeon 3/7/73; Russell Harty Plus 17/1/73; outtakes 01 The Supermen (alternate take)(2:54) Type/Quality: Various, mostly Studio/Good Comments: The quality rating above is necessarily an average and is not particularly accurate; as you'll see, the songs on here are from eclectic and various sources (which I've labeled where I could, having taken most of the dating info from what seemed to be a reputable and detailed Bowie site) with a wide range in quality. However, most of this stuff comes from soundboard or from TV recordings, so the quality is never that bad (though some of the "acetate" stuff can get shaky). The "alternate take," "TV" comments are taken from my computer's CD player, which contacts a remote CD database of info whenever I put in a disc and seemed to recognize this bootleg accurately. As an astute observer of this entry and the one above it can see, I did not do my homework when I picked Bowie bootlegs and ended up with two that are really quite similar in song content and are both redundant individually. However, a lot of this material comes from a good period in Bowie's career, so it's all good.
13/7/83 1-01 Look Back in Anger (3:12) 2-01 Station to Station (9:01) Type/Quality: Radio?/Very Good Comments: At the Montreal Forum, this is a shockingly massive live set from Bowie which with the omission of a few numbers could read as a best of collection. Impressive quality, though I'm not sure his 1983 live band does justice to some of the more classic numbers. I have a vague idea that there may be some scratches or skipping somewhere in the second disc. It's actually gruelling to listen to this whole show in one sitting, it's so long.
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16-19/9/74 16/9/74 Type/Quality: Studio/Very Good Comments: I have a small pile of Dylan albums, not nearly his whole collection, but about ten. Of those, my favorite will probably always be Blood on the Tracks, so it's very nice to have this disc, a collection of studio outtakes from the recording sessions for that album. The artwork I received with this show actually gives the address of A&R Recording Studios, where the sessions apparently took place, and even provides exact time ranges for the different days' work. Most of these songs sound like just Bob and his guitar. Some have substantially different lyrics than the final versions. The sound is generally very good. "Call Letter Blues" is actually a version of "Meet Me in the Morning" with different lyrics. "Up to Me" is a fantastic song, which does not appear on the album (I have no idea why). I was interested to hear the slight changes in the lyrics for "Tangled Up in Blue," since it is among my very favorite Dylan tunes. The main change other than the instrumentation is that Bob changes the person from first to third in most of the song, effectively making the story about someone else (which takes quite a bit of the emotional impact out of it) and the second to last verse is totally different. The last two tracks are blanketed with pops, unfortunately, but I actually happen to have cleaner copies of both of these songs on another disc, and can easily change them out. The last track, a version of "Idiot Wind," is killer, possibly better than the album version.
19-21/11, 4/12/75 1-01 Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You (3:53) 2-01 It's All Over Now, Baby Blue (4:34) Type/Quality: Soundboard/Very Good Comments: At the Memorial Auditorium in Worcester, MA (19/11/75); the Harvard Square Theatre in Cambridge, MA (20/11/75); the Boston Music Hall (from two shows on the same day, 21/11/75); and the Forum de Montreal in Canada (4/12/75). These all appear to be soundboard tracks which have been a bit scrambled together, probably to give one a sense of having one complete performance in what is pretty much the correct set order. The title given is one I found on the internet which matches my tracks, and the venue and date information at least in a general sense seems plausible. I have gotten conflicting information about which shows the individual tracks come from, however, so I have given up pinning down which is from which date. It's also possible that actually there are no tracks here at all from 19/11. Anyway, these are all complete songs in very good soundboard quality, and they sound great. Joan Baez I believe can be heard backing Bob up on quite a few numbers, and also the violin from the album Desire is in there. A lot of songs from Desire are on here, plus plenty of old favorites. Bob does some interesting alterations to the songs, as I think was his habit. This was fun to listen to. Here are some details: someone in the crowd calls for a protest song before "Sister," causing some laughter. Right before "One More Cup," maybe the same someone says "We love you Bobby!" Before "It Takes a Lot," Bob claims it is an "autobiographical" song. Joan dedicates "Mama You Been on My Mind" to a woman named "Mama" who is sitting in the front row. Also at the end of a song Joan says "Bobby will be back."
I.Q. 1-1 Introduction (3:56) 2-1 The Narrow Margin (middle section)(6:26) Type/Quality: Audience?/Good Comments: At the Colos-Saal in Aschaffenburg, Germany, this is a live show by the apparently mature and fairly distinguished European progressive rock band, I.Q. Unlike most of my other non-Genesis boots, which are generally chosen by me and are by bands that I like and am fairly familiar with, this show was pushed on me by a trader who was a big fan and who wanted me to experience the same joy he had with I.Q. Sadly, I know nothing about the band and was not very receptive to this recording, but I'm sure to fans of the band it will be a treat. I only listened to this once, but as far as I can remember the quality was quite passable. Incidentally, since I know nothing about this band, I have no idea whether the date and venue info or these song titles are even remotely accurate, but I did get them from two different sources (the trader who sent me the show and my CD player's remote CD database), so maybe they're right.
Comments: I have this show on a DVD-R as compressed FLAC files. I know nothing about it as I have not taken the time to convert the files to audio and listen. However, if you want the show I will trade it. I believe I can provide more details if asked--I think I even have artwork files for it.
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see Pink Floyd video
1-01 Arnold Layne - 1st UK single, 11/3/67 (2:56) 2-01 The Embryo - Top Gear, BBC, 14/1/69 (3:26) 3-1 Blues - Paris Theatre, 16/9/70 (5:07) 4-01 Echoes - Boston Gardens, 18/6/75 (21:25) Type/Quality: Studio, Radio, Audience, Soundboard/Very Good-Good (varies) Comments: This is a massive 4-disc set of Pink Floyd stuff, including b-sides, studio outtakes, live versions of album songs, live versions of non-album songs, demos, radio studio stuff, and all kinds of other things. All of the information for dates and venues has been taken from the inserts I was given with this set, so I can't really confirm all of them, though mostly they seem to make sense. The track titles should be correct. It is arranged mostly chronologically, though there are some inexplicable places where tracks apparently from the same date get mixed around. I'll take a quick pass through each disc and describe what's there. The first disc deals mainly with the Syd Barrett years, and in fact I already have some of the b-sides on this disc because I bought an interesting CD from a used record store which was called Pink Floyd - the First Three Singles and includes just that. Interestingly, that CD had an additional b-side called "Paint Box" which is not included on this collection. There are some BBC radio versions of songs from the first album, and some odd studio outtakes from around that period. One of these is "Scream Thy Last Scream," which features a silly voice distortion technique which seems to have been popular in the late sixties and which makes the voice sound like it's coming from a little elf or something--Bowie used it in one of his more embarrassing B-sides, "The Laughing Gnome" I think it was called. I've heard it used a couple of times now and every song that uses it is pretty crappy. "Vegetable Man" is also a bit more disturbing than entertaining, but most of the other non-album cuts are neat to hear. Disc two covers mainly the Atom Heart Mother/Ummagumma period, and has a few of the good non-album tracks that they used to play live in 1970 (according to the scant bootleg material I have below). Also included are some alternate versions of album tracks (I have "If" from 16/9 (or 7) /70 on the next entry) and some unfinished-sounding songs which apparently are outtakes for a movie soundtrack. Some bits on those songs sound like very early versions of tunes that would end up on some of the big Floyd albums of the '70s. "The Violent Sequence," one of several live cuts on this set, is surprisingly unviolent. "Cymbaline" features a long sequence in the middle of canned sounds of feet clopping around and opening and closing doors. This comes from an audience recording, which adds a lot to it as fans react to the weird noises: "I'm scared!" one audience member remarks. Disc three features some bits from Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, and Animals. Tracks 2-4 are early live versions of Dark Side songs, and in fact tracks 2-3 I already have on Forbidden Samples, below. "Money" is a short and incomplete demo of the song, very stripped down. "Brain Damage/Eclipse" is an incomplete excerpt from those songs, supposedly a "quadrophonic mix." The final disc covers The Wall and even features a small amount of what I like to call the "dehydrated" Pink Floyd (without Roger Waters). There's a live version of "Echoes," which is probably my least favorite song of 20+ minutes length, but there's some nice stuff from The Wall. "When the Tigers Broke Free" is a cool little song, and the alternate versions of the other Wall songs are quite nice--"What Shall We do Now?" is IMO better than the corresponding album track "Empty Spaces." It's nice to hear the other version of "Outside the Wall," as well. I've always disliked the way The Wall ends, with a whimper instead of a bang, and this version of the final song at least has a bit more meat to it. I'm a little unsure whether tracks 4-8 are really all from the movie soundtrack, but that's what the insert I was given said. "The Hero's Return" is yet another Waters tune about a messed up guy having troubles with his significant other and whining about his personal problems, but I still thought it was a pretty cool song. Then we seem to have some B-sides from the Momentary Lapse of Reason period--not one of the more memorable Pink Floyd albums, but there's a nice live version of "Run Like Hell." To round out the collection there's a very nice live version of "Money" from the Knebworth Festival of 1990, for which Genesis also gave a performance (which I have on audio CD and video). All in all, a very nice collection, with some good non-album tracks, which helped remind me why I have so many Pink Floyd albums in my house.
1 The Embryo (11:08) Type/Quality: Radio/Very Good-Good Comments: Recorded for BBC Radio One at the Paris Cinema (according to the beautiful cow-related artwork), this is a nice radio show of Floyd of the same kind I have for David Bowie above (Crash Course For the Ravers), which is hosted by the same person who hosted the Bowie show, who according to the artwork is John Peel. Also according to the artwork, "Pink Floyd were accompanied by the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble and the John Aldiss Choir, conducted by John Aldiss." Regardless, it's some nice, polished stuff from the Atom Heart Mother period, a couple of which I think are non-album cuts (tracks 1 and 3, both of which are also featured on my next Floyd bootleg). Actually according to the host, at this time Atom Heart Mother had yet to be released (he puts the release date as September of that year). I think this is probably a fairly common bootleg--it sounds pretty nice, though there are some pops. 1-1 Astronomy Domine (10:35) 2-1 Green is the Colour (3:34) Type/Quality: Radio?/Good-Very Good Comments: Most of this was (according to the artwork, which I frankly never trust when it comes to Genesis) recorded at the Festival du Musique Classique at Altes Casino in Montreux, Switzerland. It seems like radio quality stuff, and it is fairly edited, with not much in between stuff. The audience are treated to some fantastically long, improv-heavy songs (yes, this is Pink Floyd). This is really a neat time for Floyd, around the same time as the material on the live disc of Ummagumma, when they had a really cool bunch of live songs and a definite, very atmospheric sound which was eventually eclipsed (no pun intended) by Roger Waters' opus Dark Side of the Moon and his other opus, The Wall. "Atom Heart Mother" is played without the big band/orchestra sound, which gives it a little less eclecticism and a bit more cohesiveness. There were a couple of songs on here I'd never heard before because I have the feeling they're non-album tracks ("Cymbaline," "Embryo," "Green is the Colour"). "Saucerful" has major speed problems at the end, and possibly elsewhere; "Interstellar Overdrive" also suffers from waveriness--very nasty. The artwork claims that "If" is also on the second disc, but it is not (this may very well be an error on the part of the trader who gave me this show). The artwork claims that two of the tracks from disc two are from a BBC Paris Theatre radio broadcast a few days before the Festival, but given the incorrect track listing, this information is probably also incorrect. My guess is that only one song, the last one, is from the BBC broadcast--it sounds markedly different and better than the rest. The speed problems in the middle of disc two are rather disappointing, but disc one has some pretty impressive live music.
01 (a) Speak to Me (b) Breathe (2:59) Type/Quality: Soundboard?/Good-Very Good Comments: This is a very early live version of Dark Side of the Moon, played before the album was recorded, at the Rainbow Theatre in London. The actual first playing of the material live, when it was still called "Eclipsed," seems to have been on 20 January of '72, so this is less than a month after that. "On the Run" sounds nothing like the album version, and the lyrics for "Time" seem tentatively sung, as though they still weren't really sure about them. "The Great Gig in the Sky" is also unrecognizable, and goes under a different title. "Money" is pretty much like the final version. "Us and Them" sounds like it's the normal version, but unfortunately it is very heavily cut, only having the beginning and the very end. "Any Colour" is expanded and slightly different, but the last two numbers in the concert are pretty completed. "Eclipse" fades out. The sound is somewhat rough, but not too bad. There is no audience presence, so I assume this is a soundboard recording, though with the cut in it I'm not so sure. The date information comes from what seems to be a fairly respected Pink Floyd website. The last track is a BBC session, full orchestra recording of "Atom Heart Mother." It is in fact the very same version I already have on Mooed Music, above, but this time around I noticed there is a certain controversy surrounding the date of this performance, which is why I question the month in the track list.
1-1 Raving and Drooling (Sheep) (12:57) 2-01 (a) Speak to Me (5:27) Type/Quality: Audience/Very Good-Good Comments: At the Boston Gardens, this appears to be a fairly common recording that is available in many different versions. "Echoes in the Gardens," "Stellar Symphony," "Spaceball Ricochet," and "Boston Gardens Master" are just some of the other titles I saw. The title I've chosen above is listed on the Pink Floyd Database site (pf-db.com) and came up when I stuck the second disc of the show in my computer. This show was played on the tour for Wish You Were Here, but the band has clearly almost finished writing Animals, since a couple of the songs that would end up on the album start this set. Roger gives them alternate titles and the lyrics are not the same. At the end of the first disc the band take a break; for the second disc, they come back on and play the entirety of Dark Side of the Moon (for some reason it takes them forever to start "Speak to Me"). As an encore, they play the long "Echoes." (This was the standard set list for this year.) There are no cuts in this recording that I could hear and the quality is quite nice for an audience show. I have read that there are two different audience sources to be had for this date; I don't know which one this is, but it's nice, though I felt the keyboard solos were fairly uninspired.
28/2/80 Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale NY 2-01 Comfortaly Numb (7:50) 3-01 One of My Turns (9:57) Type/Quality: Audience and Soundboard/Very Good-Good Comments: Here is a massive collection of Wall-related Floyd. The main section is devoted to a very complete and very nice-sounding audience recording of the last of a string of Wall performances at the Nassau Coliseum in New York. The only cut is the beginning of "Hey You." The transition between songs is repeated at the end of disc one and the beginning of disc two, so you don't lose the flow of music. I've heard people say this is among the best Wall audio shows around. Following the Nassau Coliseum show is a really fascinating rehearsal performance at Paramount Studios in LA, taken from the board. It begins at the second song. For most of disc two the performance goes along pretty smoothly, with Roger inserting a few random low comments to people and coming in a bit late on a few vocal parts. Before "Goodbye Blue Sky" he requests that the bird sound effects be made louder. At the beginning of the third disc some of the tape loop at the beginning of "One of My Turns" seems to be missing (it's the bit where the woman on the soundtrack asks what "Pink" is watching on TV, then asks if he's feeling okay); Roger is not prepared for this and jumps into his vocal awkwardly. Eventually he complains that he is getting no click track on his cans. I think this means that he can't hear the drums in his headphones. There is a long discussion with the crew and Roger is very displeased with someone named James, who he speaks to repeatedly as the rehearsal continues. The wall-builders are told more than once to stop building the wall (apparently this was a real dress rehearsal and it was important for them to time the building of the wall as it would work in a real live performance): "You're fucking cheating!" Roger yells as they continue to build during the musical pause. Eventually the recording cuts off and we are missing "Don't Leave Me Now." It comes back in at the ending medley for "Another Brick ... (Part III)." By "Goodbye Cruel World" the wall has presumably been built and timing is less of an issue, so there are many more breaks in the performance (even though the tyrannical Roger lectures: "You must never stop!"), particularly in "Hey You." The recording cuts off before the performance is complete, but what's there is very interesting to listen to, a great behind-the-scenes look at the performance and the complex logistics involved--also an interesting look into Roger Waters' personality. The final few tracks on the third disc are some professionally recorded songs by Roger Waters, mostly Wall-related (I'm told this comes from a TV broadcast). At this point much water has passed under the bridge and Roger has a completely different backing band, so it's interesting to compare with the 1980 versions. His vocals sound a bit low and rough here.
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see The Police on video 01 Can't Stand Losing You (5:20) Type/Quality: Radio?/Very Good Comments: At the Hatfield Polytechnic somewhere in England, this is a fairly early gig by the Police, the best band whose members all hate each other and will never ever get back together. This is a very short and almost certainly heavily edited set, with the curious bookend of "Can't Stand Losing You," which the band plays twice so that the audience will be very good at participating the second time around. A great CD to listen to if you want to jump around and snap your head back and forth until you get whiplash. This show was broadcast on TV and I have this first ever live performance of "Message in a Bottle" on my Outlandos to Synchronicities DVD, below.
01 Synchronicity I (3:02) Type/Quality: Soundboard/Very Good Comments: At the Spectrum in Montreal, this comes from the tour for (and resultantly draws its set list heavily from) my favorite Police album, Synchronicity. Like my other Police show, I have doubts as to whether this is a complete show, but the quality is nice and the songs are great.
see Queen video 01 Ogre Battle (5:21) Type/Quality: Radio?/Very Good-Good Comments: This is very, very common Queen material, and I may actually have it on VHS (I have several Queen VHS tapes, all taped by the same dedicated trader--ask me about them!). This is at the Hammersmith Odeon (I was only theorizing about the date/venue for a long time, but another trader happily confirmed my theory--thanks Tom!). It takes place around Christmas, and is near the beginning of the Night at the Opera tour. It is definitely an edited version of the show. It was taken from a mixed tape (don't worry, my version is on CD now) and thus also includes some random Queen-related tracks at the end, with Robert Plant replacing Freddie on vocals; the remaining members of Queen help Plant with a Led Zeppelin/Queen medley which is somewhat sloppy but in good spirit. The quality for that bit could be better, but the main show is not bad and has some nice guitar solos and that interesting "Bohemian Rhapsody" medley. My wife was once a huge Queen fan (and she successfully converted me into a minor Queen fan), which is the main reason why I've collected the few Queen boots I have. She doesn't listen to them at all, but I have them.
1-01 Bohemian Rhapsody (3:00) 2-1 Doing Alright (5:50) Type/Quality: Audience/Good Comments: Supposedly at the Kosei Nenkin Hall in Tokyo, Japan (according to my Genesis gigography, this venue is in Tokyo, not Osaka as the artwork for this show claims), this is from the Night At the Opera tour and features a similar, though more expanded version, of the set in the previous entry. This one is definitely an audience show, though, as shown by the screaming Japanese girls heard on the recording. The quality could be worse, and it's a nice set, including what may be the somewhat rare "Prophet's Song."
1-01 We Will Rock You (5:26) 2-01 Love of My Life (6:22) Type/Quality: Audience/Good-Fair Comments: In Sapporo (?), Japan, according to Freddie this is the last show of their Japanese tour for the then-new Jazz album (even though the title gives it the penultimate sounding "semi-final" name). The artwork which I received with this show provided the name, place, date, and track list and times. The track information is at least correct, so I can only hope the rest of it is correct--though whoever put "sound quality: excellent" on the back of the insert had an excellent sense of humor. This is an audience recording, and while the audience does not intrude much and the band sound is fairly clear, the recording is at times wavery and not what can really be called "excellent." Also, a burner somewhere along the way added a lot of pops, several hiccups, and a pile of stutters to these discs. The stutters seems to occur only in the middle of disc two, and the hiccups are not too heavy (there's only three or five). Though this is a nice full set, with some interesting "medleys" and lots of classic Queen tunes, the performance suffers from something that I feel is endemic to Queen live performances (I'm going to get in trouble here): sloppy playing. Mainly what I'm talking about is vocals. Harmony singing is hard enough in the studio, but when Queen tries it live the result is sometimes quite grating. Additionally, though I know I'm probably asking more than human vocal chords can endure, I really wish Freddie did not insist on singing high parts lower than usual to save his voice. He consistently ruins the effectiveness of a lot of his vocals by doing this. We know Freddie is a good singer, but just knowing is not enough! OK, so I've criticized this show rather heavily, but the quality could be a lot worse, and it at least has the advantage of being what I believe to be complete.
R.E.M. 01 Moral Kiosk (3:25) Type/Quality: Radio/Very Good-Good Comments: Some of these tracks are from an early R.E.M. radio broadcast which I have a vague idea happened in London and had the date listed above. There are definitely multiple sources here, but most of them are fairly good quality. The 1985 show may be the first dozen or so songs, then from somewhere around 13 to 16 is a rather sloppy live show. Track 17 sounds like a studio take to me, as does the "title" track. The last two tracks are much more recent studio songs which somehow or other got copied very badly. "Bad Day," which is really an excellent song, gets about halfway through on here before dissolving into a sea of skips. "I Believe" is totally unlistenable. I don't have a lot of early R.E.M. albums, but I know that a lot of these songs are from their first couple of albums. "See No Evil" is actually a cover of a song by the band Television (from their fantastic album Marquee Moon). This is a pretty nice disc if you are a big fan of old school R.E.M.
1-01 World Leader Pretend (5:45) 2-1 Swan Swan H (4:06) Type/Quality: Radio/Very Good-Good Comments: At Mountain Stage in Charleston, West Virginia, R.E.M. share the stage with a few other artists (Billy Bragg, Peter Holsapple, Robyn Hitchcock, and possibly others), but most of these numbers are just R.E.M. In fact, the whole first disc is just their radio set. It seems like the usual Mountain Stage practice was to have a band do a short, acoustic set, but R.E.M. seem to do a lot of numbers. This show is just after the release of their Out of Time album, and some might argue that by this point the band had most definitely sold out. I don't want to really get into that whole issue, because I (shamefully) only became a fan of the band when this particular album came out, and it is only with great trepidation that I have started exploring their albums from before. Regardless, this is a really fun, fantastic show. There are some weird hiccups between tracks, but it doesn't detract much from the wonderful laidback atmosphere, the casual but unique and vibrant performances, and the camaraderie amongst the stage musicians. Note that toward the end of the first disc, the governor of West Virginia declares the day of the performance "R.E.M. Day" (which I was very glad of, since it allowed me to confirm the date of the gig)--a tacky sort of thing to do, but cute (and of course in Reno, Nevada, February 16, 1984 was declared "Genesis Day"). Michael Stipe says various things to the audience about the fact that they are on the radio, then that they are on the radio only in West Virginia, then that they are not on the radio anymore. Michael may not have been well informed, since the whole performance seems to come from a radio recording, though the quality does seem to shift and I think the second disc may pick up from a different source. The beginning and end of the second disc feature R.E.M. numbers, but the middle songs are all by other artists. I was pleasantly surprised to hear Robyn Hitchcock do a few acoustic numbers, which were very cool even though he spent a lot of time in between screwing around with his out-of-tune guitar. Billy Bragg and Michael Stipe do a couple of duets which are not technically proficient but are still very fun to listen to. Then there's "Dark End of the Street," which seems to feature female backup vocalists and seems a bit out of place. But as I said, R.E.M. come back and do some great closing numbers to finish off a very memorable show. Cool stuff.
1-01 Announcer Introduction (2:08) 2-1 Announcer Interlude (2:09) Type/Quality: Radio/Very Good Comments: At the Avalon Club in Los Angeles, California, this was apparently the last gig of R.E.M.'s tour in support of their greatest hits release, played only to a select audience. The band is very loose and Michael Stipe has several humorous comments. They seem rather tired of touring (especially of having to play "Losing My Religion!"), but they put in an energetic (and long) performance which seems fully documented on this radio broadcast. The announcer is somewhat annoying, but his interruptions are on separate tracks for easy skipping. I saw R.E.M. on this tour and thought they were very impressive--this is an eclectic mix that shows the full depth and range of their time-tested talents. Those looking for a particular period of the band will have to look elsewhere though, as this is really a hodge-podge. I can guarantee the date/venue and track list here: the first because the radio announcer is constantly mentioning it, the second because I painstakingly identified every one of these songs even though I didn't know half of them by title. In some cases this involved tracking down lyrics pages or listening to song samples on Amazon.com, but I was helped by a fan's recollection of the show and its set list as recorded on a web page I found. Anyway, I think this is quite a good show.
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01 Prove Yourself (2:32) Drill EP, 1992 Type/Quality: Studio and Soundboard/Excellent Comments: I am a big Radiohead fan. Fortunately, there are many others like me, resulting in some nice bootlegs. This particular one is part of a three-disc series that kind of bends one of my bootleg collecting rules. Studio/official releases of this kind (that is, b-sides) I usually consider to be untradeable. But b-sides are of limited release and quickly become nearly impossible to find; hence my excuse for getting this collection, which details in not quite comprehensive detail all of Radiohead's b-side releases, which are many and of surprisingly good quality considering that they were not considered "good" enough to put on any albums. Like I say, these are pretty cool songs; and actually quite a few of them are just alternate versions of songs that ended up on albums anyway. Whether you've heard the originals or not, it's interesting to hear these versions--especially the acoustic version of "Creep," which I may prefer to the album version.
01 Planet Telex (hexadecimal mix)(6:44) High and Dry/Planet
Telex single (1), 1995 Type/Quality: Studio and Soundboard/Excellent Comments: Volume two of this big collection of Radiohead non-album tracks. Here we see a few live versions of album songs, and a few live versions of non-album songs, including more than a fair share of alternate versions of "Planet Telex." The last two tracks actually break the year range in the title, being both from '97--they were put on this disc for space reasons.
01 A Reminder (3:50) Paranoid Android single (2), 1997 Type/Quality: Studio and Soundboard/Excellent Comments: The third and final in this three-volume collection of non-album Radiohead material only goes up to 2001, with material from Amnesiac. Still, quite a pile of music, enough for any other band to have put together a few more pretty great albums. This disc features fewer alternate versions of album songs and more original material. Neat stuff!
From the second "On a Friday" demo tape (October 1991) Type/Quality: Various/Very Good-Good Comments: Some interesting additional non-album Radiohead junk on this disc. Tracks 14 and 15 I already seem to have on my three volume collection above, and possibly 9 and 10 are also repeats, but the rest are probably not. The quality is generally not as good as it could be and comes from widely varying sources (including audience recordings for some of the live songs), but none of it is that bad. Unfortunately I don't have any dates for most of these--I just don't know where to go to research this stuff when it comes to Radiohead. If anyone would like to provide me with the information, feel free to email me. The first four tracks, if my supplied year is correct, are particularly old.
01 Lucky (5:00) Type/Quality: Radio/Very Good Comments: At the Musiek Centrum Vredenburg in Utrecht, Netherlands (or so I am told), this is a fantastic little radio show from the OK Computer tour. Though some seem to consider The Bends as the jump-off point for Radiohead's transformation into an artsy, postmodern/prog-rock thing, I think OK Computer was when the real amazing stuff started happening. So this is kind of a "cusp" period for the band, with a little music from their "only another alternative rock band from the UK" phase and a little from their new incarnation. It all sounds good.
1-01 Meeting in the Aisle (2:09) 2-1 Intro (0:08) Type/Quality: Audience/Good-Very Good Comments: At the Radio City Music Hall in New York City, this is a very long and pretty good quality audience recording. This is a typically weird set list, featuring multiple non-album tracks and a pile of encores (all of which seem to be on the second disc--the "encore disc," as it were). You might not think it's that great at the beginning, because the recorder and those near him spend a lot of time yelling at the people in front of them, trying to get them to sit down. But once "Airbag" really gets going, they quiet down and from then on it is a nice, clear recording.
1-01 Talk Show Host (5:38) 2-1 Lucky (5:00) Type/Quality: Audience?/Very Good Comments: At the Theatre Antique in Arles, France, I don't remember anymore whether this is a really good audience show or a soundboard one. Whichever it is, the sound quality is nice and the band plays a good set, with an interesting mix of their old and (then) new material.
01 The National Anthem (5:06) Type/Quality: Soundboard/Very Good Comments: At Victoria Park in Cheshire, Warrington, this is an abbreviated Radiohead show, probably from a radio broadcast. Quality is nice, it's just too bad it's not the whole show.
1-01 The National Anthem (5:04) 2-01 Idioteque (4:40) Type/Quality: Audience/Good-Very Good Comments: At Hutchison (or Hutchinson?) Field in Chicago, Illinois, this is a fairly good and very long audience show. Judging by the sounds of the applause and the pauses in the performance, it seems like almost the whole second disc is made up of encores. In fact, one wonders if this can possibly all be from the same source. There are some curious intros and the band has to start "Paranoid Android" twice.
Shepherds Bush Empire, 25 May 2003 Type/Quality: Soundboard, TV, Radio/Very Good Comments: This is a smattering of live Radiohead material, mainly from a UK 2003 performance. There's quite a few things here from Hail to the Thief, strangely combined with a couple tracks from '98 and '97. Cool stuff.
1-01 Introduction (0:45) 2-01 The National Anthem (4:29) Type/Quality: Radio/Very Good-Excellent Comments: At Greatwoods Tweeter Center in Mansfield, Massachusetts, this is a nice long radio show documenting Radiohead's first US gig on their tour for Hail to the Thief. I don't know what else to say.
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Black Forest 1-1 Anthem (4:18) 2-1 A Farewell to Kings (5:42) Type/Quality: Soundboard/Very Good-Good Comments: At the Stadhalle in Offenbach, Germany. All of the information I have as to date and venue and type comes from the trader I got this from and from the CD itself, which was read by my iTunes database and gave me all the track names. I also of course confirmed most of the songs listed by using my own somewhat scant knowledge of the band's music (for a while I thought the last few numbers before the drum solo were covers, but have since been corrected: they are early Rush compositions). People always tell me I should like Rush since I like bands like Genesis and Yes, but I've never gotten really into them. They have a kind of embarrassing quality to them that their die hard fans seem unaware of but which makes me kind of ashamed to admit that I enjoy songs like "2112" and "Cygnus X-1." But I do like a lot of the songs on here--the quality is good and the set is impressive. "2112" is somewhat edited by the band, who omit the "Oracle: The Dream" section of the song. St. Louis '80
Remaster 2112: Type/Quality: Radio/Very Good-Good Comments: At the good old Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis, Missouri, this is a radio show probably culled from the performances over the date range listed above. Because it's a radio show, I think the set list may be a bit rearranged, and the "Discovery" section of "2112" has been severely edited (based on my Black Forest show, above, I think the band themselves customarily omitted the "Oracle" section)--probably a few songs are missing as well. However, what is here sounds rather nice, though I think the mix is a bit strange. The set list is very similar to the Black Forest show, with some small variations. I don't have much else to say; this is a pretty solid show.
01 100% (3:24) Type/Quality: Radio and Audience/Excellent Comments: As with Radiohead, I am a big Sonic Youth fan, but I don't actually have all their albums (I don't want to sound defensive, but they are a fairly prolific band). Like Radiohead, I've even seen them live once (while they were on tour for Murray Street, an excellent and fairly recent album), and it was fantastic (in fact, I liked that show better than Radiohead--probably because it took me two hours to get out of the parking lot after the Radiohead show...). However, this particular gig, the first I managed to get from Sonic Youth on CD, is from a tour which I think is for an album I don't have--or it's for the album Dirty, which I have but which is not among my favorite Sonic Youth albums. Oh, well, there are still some nice numbers on here, and the sound is pretty fantastic. Most of it comes from the Brixton Academy in London (FYI, it was a Monday night), but the last two tracks are from possibly multiple alternate sources, unknown and most likely audience--the quality is not nearly as good. "Youth Against Fascism" makes for a nice finale to the Brixton material.
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1-01 Incident on 57th Street (10:39) 2-1 Kitty's Back (11:44) Type/Quality: Soundboard-FM/Excellent-Very Good Comments: At the Main Point in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, this is a radio show hosted by local radio station WMMR DJ Ed Shockey (sp?). I have to believe that at least the first disc of this was not recorded from the radio at all, even though this appears to have been simulcast. It sounds very much like it's coming off the board to me. The sound on the first disc is absolutely incredible. The clarity is unbelievable. The only problem is that the quiet parts are very, very quiet, and the loud parts very loud, so I found myself constantly twiddling the volume knob. On the second disc the sound is a bit rougher and it sounds as though it was in fact taped off the radio and then transferred to vinyl, and then transferred to CD. The tracks where I noticed it the most were "NYC Serenade" and "For You." There are also some scratches at the end of the second disc. Still it remains a very, very good recording, a fantastic record of this point in Bruce's career. This is technically still part of the tour for Bruce's second album (hence the title of the bootleg, which is a pun off the album's name), but he does play quite a few of the songs (in very early, unfinished stages) that would end up on the seminal and classic Born to Run. Unfortunately, because they are unfinished, the songs are just not as good as they would be on the album--indeed, in "Thunder Road" Bruce does not sing my favorite lines from the song ("You can hide 'neath your covers and study your pain/make crosses for your lovers, throw roses in the rain/Waste your summer praying in vain for a savior to rise from these streets"). Still, it's interesting to hear them in this stage. "She's the One" uses a line that Bruce would eventually put in "Backstreets." This is the first of multiple Bruce shows I have in which the DJ thinks the show is over, but Bruce comes back on stage. It's funny to hear the DJ's reaction. Interesting to note that most sites I saw listed the first disc as ending with "Jungleland," but the iTunes database still recognized my first disc without that track. 1-01 Rave on (2:49) 2-01 Paradise By the "C" (4:17) 3-1 Independence Day (6:15) Type/Quality: Radio/Very Good Comments: At the Roxy in L.A. As you can see, this is a typically looooooong Bruce show. This one is from the Darkness on the Edge of Town tour, but Bruce throws in some songs that would end up on The River, his next release. I've heard people describe this as soundboard but I think it's just a taped radio show. The sound is very good, but not direct from the board, and my copy has some scratchiness. It's probable that "For You" is actually from a different date--the sound is different for that track and it does not transition smoothly (if this is true, the problem is probably unique to my copy--the trader gave me this track and "Point Blank" on a separate disc after having given me the show without those songs, and I had to construct the complete show). There's a very amusing section near the end where the radio station thinks Bruce is done, actually resumes regular programming, and then goes back to the show because the audience has convinced Bruce to come back on stage. 1-01 Intro (0:32) 2-01 Cadillac Ranch (5:24) 3-01 You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch) (4:36) Type/Quality: Radio/Very Good Comments: At the Nassau Coliseum in Long Island, New York, this is an incredibly long New Year's Eve concert from the incredibly long tour for The River, Bruce's incredibly long four-sided album. This performance of "Merry Christmas Baby" was used for a Christmas music album called A Very Special Christmas (Volume 1), which I just happen to have. Note that my version has some skips during "Two Hearts." Other than that the quality is very good, and you couldn't possibly ask for more music. Tracks 9-13 on disc 3 were referred to as the "Detroit Medley" on one site I looked at.
01 Intro (0:33) Type/Quality: Audience/Very Good-Good Comments: Bruce never actually toured in support of his enigmatic, somewhat inaccessible solo album Nebraska. However during his big Born in the USA tour he managed to play every single song from Nebraska at one point or another. So here we have the bootleggers' solution to the Nebraska "problem": someone has stuck together the album's tracks in order from a lot of different good quality live shows. I believe all of these are audience recordings. The dates were culled from www.brucespringsteen.it, a very impressive Bruce live database. Also included at the end of the disc are some non-album live numbers from the same period. 1-1 Audience opening (1:03) 2-1 Youngstown (6:24) 3-1 Backstreets (7:42) Type/Quality: Audience/Good Comments: If you live in New Jersey, it will go much better for you if you're a fan of The Boss--fortunately, I am. I even had his Live in New York City DVD before I got this show--which is somewhat unfortunate, since the two shows come from the same tour, and have very similar sets, and of course the DVD sounds and looks much better. Still, nice to hear the uncut, unpolished show, which has some different songs and is surely among my longest live shows. This tour features a nice smattering of songs from throughout his career--a good half of them could count as old classics. I'm always surprised at how much Bruce focuses on the album The River in his live sets, since I don't think of it as one of his stronger albums; but I guess it did have quantity and brevity (at least of individual songs) on its side. If you don't mind the huge interlude breaking up "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out," the band introductions can be quite entertaining. 1-01 The Rising (6:10) 2-1 Night (4:20) Type/Quality: Video or TV/Very Good Comments: At the Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona, Spain. This is actually just a partial transfer of the official DVD of the same name. So the quality is good, but the legality is a tad questionable. According to Bruce's official site, the actual 2-disc DVD set has five more songs at the end of the first DVD that are not on the first disc here. However this version has an acoustic solo studio song at the end. I don't know where this song came from or even if the title is correct, but it's definitely Bruce. It actually uses some lines of lyric from one of the songs on The Rising, so it must be from around the same period. It also seems to end very abruptly, so it may not be complete. I removed some fairly spacious pauses from between these tracks, and the pauses may have killed some audio from the transitions, because the track segues don't seem quite smooth. Also there are some sound errors on "Night." Other than that it sounds good. 1-01 Darkness on the Edge of Town (4:28) 2-01 Souls of the Departed (3:41) Type/Quality: Audience/Very Good-Good Comments: At the Somerville Theater in Somerville, Massachusetts, this is a really fantastic live show. Bruce does a truly "intimate" acoustic concert with a very low-scale band (it may just be him for all I know, though I don't think so) and a lot of stories and explanations about his writing process and the meanings of the songs. Apparently there was also a Q&A session after the show, though that is not included here. Also missing is "The Promised Land," which should have been the second to the last track on disc two, but was bumped off by mistake. The quality is really very nice for an audience show, very clear. There are just a few moments in the show where some coughing or some microphone bumps spoil the illusion that you might be listening to a soundboard recording. "Thunder Road" is a really spine-tingly version, and many of his other classics and not-so-classics get very interesting face lifts here. Certainly worth a listen for any fan of The Boss.
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STEELY DAN
01 Bodhisattva (4:51) Type/Quality: Radio/Very Good Comments: At the Record Plant in Los Angeles, this is one of many bootlegs from this gig, played during their tour for Pretzel Logic . This version has two-second pauses between the tracks--which bugged me, but not enough to remove the pauses. I have little to say about the show itself except that it sounds pretty great. The band was cooking and all of these songs sound good. Later tours of the band in the late 20th and early 21st centuries were very good, but some of the edge and earnestness heard here is missing on those. Here Donald sings "Do It Again" the way it was meant to be sung, the drum beat beginning "King of the World" is awesome, and "Reelin' in the Years" is fast-paced and electrifying. "Gold Teeth" is entirely instrumental, perhaps because the song was still in its early compositional stages at this point. The last track is a non-album song, I think, but like the rest of the show this is a live performance of it, not the studio b-side. At the very end of the disc the song fades out and an announcer comes on to say "This is Steely Dan live from the Record Plant." 1-01 True Companion (4:46) 2-01 The Royal Scam / Parker's Band / The Fez (8:11) Type/Quality: Soundboard/Excellent-Very Good Comments: At the Irvine Meadows Amphitheater, this is one of a number of very clean Steely Dan shows that I have been lucky enough to acquire. This one comes from their '94 tour, which I believe was the Alive in America one. It's rather ironic that I have several live shows from Steely Dan, who are famous for their dislike of live touring. Really they seem to be exceptional at putting together a great live performance, because they always put together a great team of musicians and they always rock in their own inimitable way. They also seem to tend to put in some odd and sometimes fairly rare songs into their set. There are a few here that are not very well known to me, mostly because they come from solo projects of Donald Fagen or Walter Becker (one of the Becker songs, "Down in the Bottom," is really quite awful). You can always trust Steely Dan to stick to the really good old songs--in this case, that was all they had, since their new releases (beginning with Two Against Nature for 2000) were still several years away--and there are some truly great numbers on here, though some of them receive some (unwelcome?) facelifts. 1-01 Do it Again (6:04) 2-01 Peg (4:55) Type/Quality: Soundboard/Excellent-Very Good Comments: Played at Manassas, Virginia (the site of famous Civil War battles!), this soundboard recording from Steely Dan's '96 tour (the Art Crimes tour?) again features some interesting solo numbers in addition to the band classics. It also has an early, alternate version of "Jack of Speed," a song which would end up on Two Against Nature (and sound much better on the album, IMO). Note the welcome appearance of "IGY," one of Donald's better solo songs. This one is definitely straight from the board, as it were, since (unlike the Irvine show from '94, which at least had a little bit of light applause audible in the back) there is very close to no audience sound whatsoever. You kind of lose some of the live energy, but the quality is very crisp and clean. Note that "FM" is instrumental only, a background for the band intros. 1-1 The Boston Rag (8:26) 2-01 Hank's Place (Session at Pete's Pad) (5:11) Type/Quality: Audience/Very Good-Good Comments: At the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View California, this is an impressive audience recording from Steely Dan's Y2K tour for Two Against Nature, which focuses totally on Steely Dan material (unlike their tours in the '90s). For those of you not fans of the newer material, it may be annoying wading through the new stuff to get to the old stuff, but some of the new songs--especially "Jack of Speed" and "Cousin Dupree"--deserve a listen. 1-01 The Boston Rag (7:19) 2-01 The Royal Scam (6:47) Type/Quality: Audience/Good-Very Good Comments: In Camden, New Jersey, this pretty nice audience gig came very near the first show at which I saw Steely Dan live. This is probably the lowest quality recording I have of them, but that's comparing it to some exceptional soundboard shows--this is not that bad an audience show most of the time. I believe there are some bumps in part of it somewhere, and when the band takes their break the CD also takes a break--the "Intermission" track at the end of disc one actually is about seven minutes of dead space. The great majority of this sounds pretty great though. Note that the set for at least the first half is slightly different than my other 2000 show.
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see Yes on video
1-1 Firebird Suite (1:57) 2-1 The Ancient (22:49) Type/Quality: Audience/Good-Very Good Comments: At the Arena in Long Beach, California, this is a complete audience recording from the Tales From Topographic Oceans tour. The band end up playing 75% of the unwieldy Topographic Oceans album, but they also manage to cram a lot of older classics in the set, including one of my favorites, "Starship Trooper," which has an awesome jam at the end. Of course, there's plenty of impressive musicianship to be heard throughout the show. The soundtrack has a lot of buzzes in the background and tends toward crackly, but it's quite nice all the same, with no cuts. The only issue I heard beside the crackles was a short dropout in the middle of "Roundabout." For some reason Jon totally cracks up while singing "Starship Trooper"--maybe because he messes up the words slightly. Nice show. One final note: this show came to me in a totally different order and with gaps between the tracks. I rearranged the songs according to the set list for this gig provided on forgottenyesterdays.com, and removed the gaps.
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1-1 Introduction (1:28) 2-1 And You and I (10:42) Type/Quality: Radio/Very Good Comments: At the Boston Gardens in (can you guess?) Boston, this show comes from a radio broadcast by WMMR and is a really fantastic set of songs. For me, probably the two best Yes albums of all time are Close to the Edge and Relayer, and this performance includes the best songs from both. Quality could be better, but is still radio stuff. Pretty fantastic.
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1-1 Announcer Introduction (1:22) 2-01 Long Distance Runaround (2:17) Type/Quality: Radio/Very Good Comments: At Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City in good old New Jersey, this is a nice big radio show from the good people at PRRP (they've had a hand in a few Genesis and related remasters as well). The announcers are a tad annoying; the broadcast seems to have been simulcast, so they have to come up with things to say about the show in between encores and at the beginning and end. It can be helpful for those of us who can't visualize the show, as the announcers describe some of the things that are happening. In addition to some nice tracks from Relayer and Fragile, the band take some time out for self-indulgent instrumental solos from their respective members--including a Jon Anderson snippet from his Olias of Sunhillow album. There is even a song from the pretentious Tales From Topographic Oceans album (which I actually kind of like). As a final encore, the band make the interesting choice of covering a song that I know best from The Beatles. Nice stuff.
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Digital Reels Session, 1978 Type/Quality: Studio/Very Good Comments: This is a collection of studio demos. The information above was taken from the CD Database which found a track list for my CD when I put it in my computer drive, and from a Yes site I found which had this bootleg listed and had more accurate track names. As you can see there are multiple takes of most songs and it comes from band line-ups with and without Jon Anderson. The songs at the end of the disc have no vocals. Quality is a little rough but still studio stuff.
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1-1 Apocalypse (or Close Encounters) (1:20) 2-1 Starship Trooper (11:56) Type/Quality: Radio/Very Good Comments: At the "Gouee" in Quebec City, this is a show from the Tormato tour (which I don't think is that bad an album for what I think of as "later" period Yes). Radio quality, so not bad at all. Features a medley of older songs that is pretty cool, unless you'd rather hear the whole songs--but there are lots of whole songs, too.
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1-1 Apocalypse/Siberian Khatru (10:46) 2-1 And You and I (11:37) Type/Quality: Radio/Very Good-Good Comments: Live in Chicago, it's Yes! This comes from the same tour as the Quebec City show, so the set list is very similar. Here there seem to be fewer numbers, and the sound is a tad rougher, but still quite nice. Note that Yes has gone beyond Phil's pandering to the audience which stretched merely to adding lyrics about that night's city into a Genesis song--Yes makes a whole song just about the city they're playing in (which incidentally sounds suspiciously similar to the song they sang about Quebec that year).
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1-1 Introduction (4:48) 2-1 Cinema (5:21) 3-1 Walls (6:49) Type/Quality: Radio/Very Good Comments: At the Riverport Amphitheater in Maryland Heights, Missouri, this sounds like yet another radio quality show in my Yes collection. I have a confession to make: I'm one of those Yes fans who thinks it all went to hell around 1980 or so (though I really do like "Owner of a Lonely Heart"), so this massive three-disc show is largely boring and tepid to me--Jon Anderson was feeling particularly fruity that night, as well. Still, it's a good performance at good quality, and I'm sure will be enjoyed by Yes fans with more open minds.
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1-1 Introduction (Firebird Suite)(3:26) 2-1 The Messenger (7:04) Type/Quality: Soundboard/Very Good-Excellent Comments: At the House of Blues in Mandalay Bay Resort, Las Vegas, Nevada. This is a Highland boot from the band's Ladder tour. The actual Highland show is three discs--currently I only have the first two discs. We'll see if I manage to acquire the third. Material from this gig seems to be available in partial smatterings on various official releases, including video. This is soundboard stuff and sounds quite nice. The lineup for this tour was Jon, Steve Howe and Billy Sherwood on guitars, Chris Squire on bass, Alan White on drums, and someone named Igor Khoroshev on keyboards instead of Wakeman. The band play lots of old classics sprinkled with tracks from their then-new album. Interestingly, the version of "And You and I" that is played here has the same delicate acoustic beginning as the original album version, whereas when they used to play it in the 70s they played an alternate, louder opening. Note that "Time and a Word" and "Ritual" are only very shortened versions, played as excerpts by the band. "It Will Be a Good Day" seems to end very abruptly and may be cut. Chris Squire's backing vocals are mixed very high--higher than I could wish, really.
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ON VIDEO
DAVID BOWIE St. Goarshausen, Germany (22/6/96): Look Back in Anger/Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)/Diamond Dogs/The Heart's Filthy Lesson/Outside/Aladdin Sane/Andy Warhol/The Voyeur of Utter Destruction (as Beauty)/The Man Who Sold the World/Telling Lies/Baby Universal/Hallo Spaceboy/Breaking Glass/We Prick You/Jump They Say/Lust For Life/Under Pressure/Heroes/White Light|White Heat/Moonage Daydream/All the Young Dudes/Interview Comments: On DVD. A nice long Bowie concert from 1996, followed by an interview. The broadcast is by Rockpalast and features a long German introduction from host Alan Bangs, who mentions other artists performing at the festival. The Bowie footage begins with a helicopter doing a flyover while carrying a giant flaming Rockpalast logo. For real! Bowie and his bassist (a tall, bald, spindly woman who provides backup vocals and does a good job filling in for Freddie Mercury on "Under Pressure") seem to be going for an 18th-century costume ball type of thing, but the drummer and the keyboardist didn't get the memo. The guitarist, who is amazing, has a nice feathery guitar strap. There are some very interesting versions of his old classics, updated to his then-new sound: "Andy Warhol" gets quite a facelift, and I love "The Man Who Sold the World." This was around the time of his Outside album but features an early version of "Telling Lies," which would end up on Earthling. The concert is filmed at least partly by a cool computerized floating camera that soars around Bowie and off into the audience. After the show we are treated to a small fireworks display, and then an English-language interview with Bowie by Alan Bangs. It's a nice interview; they talk about his stage show and his work with Iggy Pop (who is also at the festival), and his Outside project with Brian Eno. The album was supposed to be the first in a series of fictitious diary entries, but it was a project that just sort of fizzled out. Following the interview is another German-language portion with Alan back at his studio desk, and it is just cutting over to Iggy Pop's stage show when the video ends.
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PINK FLOYD
DVD 1: London 66-67: Interstellar Overdrive/Scene Special: Interstellar Overdrive/Arnold Layne promo film/Look of the Week: Pow R Toc H, Astronomy Domine, Interview/Pathe Newsreel: The Scarecrow promo film/American Bandstand: Apples and Oranges (mimed)/UK Central Office of Information: Jugband Blues promo film/Radio ET T1 Vision Belge mimed promo films: Astronomy Domine, Corporal Clegg, Set the Controls For the Heart of the Sun, Apples and Oranges, Paintbox, See Emily Play, The Scarecrow/Bouton Rouge: Astronomy Domine, Flaming, Set the Controls For the Heart of the Sun/Rome Goes Pop: Interstellar Overdrive/All My Loving: Set the Controls For the Heart of the Sun DVD 2: Tous En Scene: Let There Be More Light, Flaming/Excerpts From European TV and Promo Films: A Saucerful of Secrets (German TV 1969), Roland Petit Ballet performance (L'assault de la Palace d'Armes 1973), It Would Be So Nice (promo film 1968), Let There Be More Light (promo film 1968), Sysyphus (Tomorrow's World, BBC 1968)/An Hour With Pink Floyd (1970): Cymbaline/Point Me At the Sky promo film/Stamping Ground (1970): Set the Controls For the Heart of the Sun, A Saucerful of Secrets/Hakone Open Air Festival (Japan 1971): Atom Heart Mother/French Windows: One of These Days (animated film by Ian Emes)/Crystal Voyager (surfing film by David Elfick): features Echoes Comments: Fortunately I have an artwork file for this 2-DVD set which allowed me to provide the incredibly detailed listing above. Sorry it's so hard to read--normally I don't have that much information to write in the track listing area. Most of the first disc comes from very early in the band's career and has Syd Barrett in it. It's sad because you can kind of see Syd get worse as the material goes on. For the "Look of the Week" clip early in the first disc he is really quite lucid in a rather confrontational interview with a German-accented, very conservative music critic who very honestly admits before the performance that he dislikes their music. But for the American Bandstand "Apples and Oranges" Syd really looks unwell, spaced-out, and does an obviously fake vocal performance. The other band members appear strangely joyful, perhaps trying to make up for Syd's appearance. After the "Jugband Blues" video Syd is gone, and the series of promo films following it have David Gilmour or Roger Waters lip-synching to Syd's vocals. The Bouton Rouge clip is weird as the announcer is at a desk or console behind the band and just sort of stands around uncomfortably while they perform the songs. Those are not mimed performances and feature David actually on vocals for the first two songs. As the artwork says, the performance of "Atom Heart Mother" at the Japan open-air gig has overdubbed sound. That footage shows the band playing, but not necessarily in synch with the music, and also has other random footage of the band coming through customs in the airport, at press conferences, and generally hanging out in Japan. The animated movie "French Windows" is interesting, but the highlight of the second disc for me was the clip for "Echoes." Now "Echoes" is definitely not among my favorite Floyd songs, but the video has some absolutely incredible underwater footage of waves building and breaking--really beautiful photography, and very in keeping with the tone/mood of the song, I thought. The artwork also says that there are "hidden bonus tracks," which I haven't gotten around to finding yet. This is a really fantastic compilation by Harvested, and it has a very nice and detailed menu system with all the information above. FYI, I have the full broadcast An Hour With Pink Floyd (from which only "Cymbaline" is featured here) as the second disc of my Into the Vault set, below. Also in the very last clip on disc one there is a very very few seconds of footage which I have in very raw and untouched form at the end of disc one of Into the Vault.
DVD 1: OmniPresent (The Omni, Atlanta GA, 3-5/11/87) One of These Days/Us and Them/Comfortably Numb/One Slip/Run Like Hell/The Great Gig in the Sky (East End, London, 3/68) Set the Controls For the Heart of the Sun (four takes) DVD 2: An Hour With Pink Floyd (KQED San Francisco, 29/4/70): Atom Heart Mother/Cymbaline/Grantchester Meadows/Green is the Colour/Careful With That Axe, Eugene/Set the Controls For the Heart of the Sun Comments: This is an interesting combination of footage on two DVDs. The first disc has very professionally-shot footage of a dehydrated Pink Floyd (no Waters! get it?!), from their Momentary Lapse of Reason tour, but has been heavily edited so that you get mostly the older numbers. The source is most likely a very good quality Betacam SP tape of promo video material for the Floyd tour, purchased on Ebay by a fan and released to the trading public under the name given above, by HouseHold Objects. This version is probably not the "official" HouseHold Objects release, but the set list is identical and the quality is excellent. The stage show for these clips is typically wow-filled. There is a circular screen behind the band surrounded by lights that make crazy patterns on it--the screen also has movies projected onto it. There are lights in the stage below the performers that can swivel around, floating and rotating lighting rigs, and a laser show. There is the mandatory flying pig, fireworks, and a giant disco ball which comes out of the ground and opens up to reveal even more shiny lights. There are also far more people on stage than just the three main Floyd members. There is a bassist who likes to kick his leg up in the air and serves as a replacement for Waters in the vocal department. There is an extra drummer, and several groups of female backup singers dressed in ridiculous late-80s fashion. There is also a ludicrous saxophonist/guitarist with awful, awful, awful hair, who physically contorts himself while playing his sax solos in "Us and Them," and generally looks like he's having a record-making bowel movement. Occasionally video footage cuts into the concert, a la Genesis In Concert 1976--there is footage of crowds of laborers during "Us and Them" and a lot of daredevil stunts during "One Slip." During "Great Gig" there is a lot of behind-the-scenes footage of an open-air concert seemingly from the same tour, though not the one that is actually represented by the video. One theory for date and venue: June 22 1988 - Place d'Armes du Chateau de Versailles, Versailles, France. The sound and picture are excellent and it really is an enjoyable show. After this we cut to a much earlier Pink Floyd. This is very raw video (untouched rushes) of the band doing several live takes of "Set the Controls" inside a building. You get to see the old-fashioned clapper used to synch the sound at the beginning of the take. The lights are dim and there's a lot of low flashing of colors. The outfits are psychedelic. The idea was that they were filming several takes with the idea of editing them together later--none of the single takes is perfect, because often the camera will hover over David Gilmour or Richard Wright and they will look uncomfortably at the camera as if to say "Why are you pointing that thing at me?" Also the camera zooms and pans at inopportune moments. From time to time some cool footage of what looks like sun flares cuts in. Roger has an annoying habit of putting one hand up to one ear whenever he has to sing the vocals--I guess that helped. The first three takes are all the complete song; the fourth take starts about halfway through the song and instead of panning over the various band members, the camera remains in a long shot and slowly turns up to the roof of the building, which has an interesting design. This fourth take is supposed to be an edited-together version of the first three, but it didn't look like it to me. The source for this footage is as follows: From 16mm film with separate audio reel. Tony Palmer filmed the takes for his "All My Loving" series, but basically never used them. (See the end of disc one of my Let's Roll Another One anthology, above, for a very few seconds of this footage mixed in with a different video.) March 1968 is when Tony says it was filmed, but October of that year is also a possibility. The location is most likely a water sewage treatment plant or deserted power plant in East End London, torn down since. It's amazing that this footage has survived in such good quality--very interesting to have. The second disc is just one live set of songs--the title and date information matches various web sites which described the footage. The studio it was performed in was probably the Filmore West. I actually have "Cymbaline" from this broadcast on the second disc of my Let's Roll Another One anthology, above. The video begins with extended aerial footage of fields and bodies of water, and slowly dissolves into the studio where Pink Floyd is playing the song. For "Grantchester Meadows," one of the more straightforward songs from Ummagumma, some nature footage is shown in between the band footage. Clouds and smoke are provided for "Green is the Colour" and "Eugene." The band is just set up with all their equipment in a dark room, nothing fancy. But the picture and sound are really remarkable for the age of the footage--it's great quality stuff. During "Set the Controls" Roger Waters bangs a gong so violently that he bends the mallet he's using and has to try to fix it!
Earls Court, London (9/8/80): In the Flesh?/The Thin Ice/Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1/The Happiest Days of Our Lives/Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2/Mother/Goodbye Blue Sky/What Shall We Do Now?/Young Lust/One of My Turns/Don't Leave Me Now/Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3/Goodbye Cruel World/Hey You/Is There Anybody Out There?/Nobody Home/Vera/Bring the Boys Back Home/Comfortably Numb/The Show Must Go on/In the Flesh/Run Like Hell/Waiting For the Worms/Stop/The Trial/Outside the Wall Comments: This is a pro-shot video (on DVD, transferred from VHS) of an entire performance of The Wall, from performances given at Earls Court over 4-9 August (I've seen more than one Floyd site which pins the date at 9 August, as that was the only date where Roger Waters introduces "Run Like Hell" three times, as he does on the video). Apparently taped by the road crew and never meant for public release. Coming into this video, I had seen the motion picture and listened to the album many times. When I was done watching this performance I felt like I had never really heard or even begun to understand the album until then. I really feel that seeing the live performance of the show is the way you were meant to experience The Wall. Being who I am, I couldn't help but compare the stage show to that of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. I recall how Tony Banks complained that of the approximately hundred shows given, there were only a small handful where the slides, costumes, lighting, explosive effects and so on worked correctly. Then I thought about the difficulties involved in getting the stage show for The Wall to go right. This show features multiple explosions, a huge and complex lighting rig, a gigantic wall which is built on stage as the show progresses and destroyed at the show's conclusion, animations projected onto screens that at times actually need to be exactly synched to the music, slides, floating puppets, gigantic pigs, flying planes--not to mention the fact that, after the wall has been completely built and totally obscures the band, they have to set their instruments up all over again on the outside of the wall. On the music side of things, the live performance of the album is significantly different than the album version. One example is "Empty Spaces," a much-extended version which sounds more like the one on the motion picture; but mostly the musical difference is due to multiple improvs played by the band (the band consists of more people than just the normal Floyd line-up--there are backup singers and I believe extra drummers and keyboardists, as well as a strange announcer who comes out about three-quarters through the show to tease the audience about when the band are going to begin playing again--apparently he also did this at the beginning of the show, though that part is not present on the video). Probably the improvs are all what you might call synching aids to get the music and the elaborate stage production back in line with each other (a similar device in Genesis terms was the "Interlude" Tony played before "Lamia" so that Peter could get behind the lamia shower curtain, or the "Arrival" improv that was played while Peter emerged from his slipperman cocoon). At least on this performance there is a great deal of jamming to this effect on the first half of the show, and especially in the segue between "Another Brick...Part 3" and "Goodbye Cruel World." The band actually play a sort of medley of the main themes. After the end of the first half there is a twenty-minute intermission (thankfully omitted from the video!). By this time as well the wall has been completely built on stage. Songs during most of the second half of the show are performed through chinks in the wall or sets that are stuck in front of the wall--David Gilmour actually does his entire part for "Comfortably Numb" while standing on top of the wall! He plays some absolutely vicious guitar solos. Before "In the Flesh" the announcer comes out while the band set up again in front of the wall. "The Trial" features some major animation sequences with which Roger Waters must sing along in synch. At the end of this number, as can be told by listening to the studio version, the wall is destroyed. As I said, this show is a real eye-opener if you haven't seen it before, and if you have, I'm sure you'll want to see it again.
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THE POLICE
(1995): Every Breath You Take (studio)/Next to You/Fall Out/Message in a Bottle/Reggatta de Blanc/Can't Stand Losing You/Roxanne/So Lonely/It's Alright For You/The Bed's Too Big Without You/Driven to Tears/Walking on the Moon/Demolition Man/Bring on the Night/King of Pain/Wrapped Around Your Finger/Every Little Thing She Does is Magic (studio) Comments: On DVD transferred from the 1995-release VHS. The VHS was in fine shape so the transfer is excellent and the quality is what you might call flawless. This is a bio movie of the band sprinkled with live performances from throughout their history. The opening studio track is played over a home video montage of the band. There are interviews with the band members and their manager Miles Copeland (Stewart's brother). The movie does not deal with the band's recording process and talks very little about the albums--it really is mainly about the band's chemistry and very generally about their touring history. There's a lot of footage of Sting and co. cursing and pummeling each other, but the great majority of the movie is the live music. The Police seem to have been filmed on numerous occasions. Some of the songs may be edited a bit, but most appeared to be complete. "Next to You" is from a Grey Whistle Test performance; Sting is wearing Stewart's sunglasses, which are far too big for him, because just before the performance he had accidentally sprayed something in his eyes and was basically blind. "Fall Out" and "Message in a Bottle" are both from Hatfield '79--"Message" is the first live performance of that song, before it was even recorded. I have an audio recording of this gig above. "Reggatta" and "Can't Stand Losing You" are at the Gusman Philharmonic in Miami, 1979. "Roxanne" and "So Lonely" are at the Hammersmith Odeon '79. "It's Alright For You" comes from some video show in 1980; "The Bed's Too Big" I'm not sure about as for most of the song there is just a video montage of their world tour. "Driven to Tears" is at Frejus France '80. "Walking," "Demolition" and "Bring on the Night" are all from Gateshead '82. "King of Pain" and "Wrapped Around" are from Atlanta '83, the same concert from which the entire next entry is taken. "Every Little Thing" plays over the credits along with some home video footage of the band dancing around on a beach. After that is a cute little clip of Stewart recording himself talking while simultaneously playing the drums live. There is some talk at the end about the band possibly reuniting which is all very ironic considering their 2007 reunion tour.
Omni, Atlanta GA (11/83): Synchronicity I/Walking in Your Footsteps/Message in a Bottle/Walking on the Moon/Wrapped Around Your Finger/Hole in My Life/King of Pain/One World (Not Three)/Tea in the Sahara/O My God/De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da/Every Breath You Take/Can't Stand Losing You/Spirits in the Material World/So Lonely Comments: A DVD transferred from a VHS released in 1984. Quality is excellent, no problems. The title pretty much says it all! I don't know if this is the full show; the running time is about 1.25 hours. This is a pretty straight concert video, though the director tried for some video effects in some of them, usually involving changing the color. "Wrapped Around" is in slow motion. There are some zoom tricks and Sting is given a camera which he points out at the audience for one song. There are many shots of the audience, focusing on individual people--some of this is okay but it's kind of annoying. The fashions are very 1983, and the band are joined by a trio of backup singers wearing what seems to be only the top half of a set of high school marching band uniforms. Sting has a tiny personal trampoline which he uses from time to time.
Giants Stadium, East Rutherford NJ (7/7/07): Driven to Tears/Roxanne/I Can't Stand Losing You - Reggatta de Blanc/Message in a Bottle (Entire performance from Sundance channel and Bravo broadcasts) Comments: This DVD features two different American TV broadcasts of the Police performance at the Live Earth benefit concert. This was the US portion of the show, played at Giants Stadium. The DVD features a simple menu screen with song selection for the first broadcast--the second broadcast has not been separated that way. The first broadcast (the Sundance channel one) is the worse of the two. I noticed a few digital glitches or hang-ups throughout the performance, and the volume was low. The station repeatedly breaks for commercials. The commercials have been edited out, but not some of the station identification and miscellaneous graphics put on before and after the breaks. The second broadcast, from Bravo, plays the entire performance without break, and the volume is louder. I didn't notice any picture glitches in this one (though I admit I didn't look at the screen every single second!), and some more of the stuff between songs is on here. You get to hear Sting introduce John Mayer, who joins the band on guitar for the last number. Also on this version after the performance Sting introduces Al Gore, who comes on stage with his wife for a (mercifully) brief announcement. The only trade-off I could see with the Bravo version was that there were more graphics down the bottom of the screen than on the Sundance broadcast: at the beginning of the performance there is a distracting list of people's names ticking along. Anyway, the performance itself is pretty good, though Sting's voice was rough that night. The band do some predictable old standards, some of them geared towards the question authority/save the Earth theme of the concert. For "Message in a Bottle," they are joined not only by John Mayer (as mentioned earlier), but by Kanye West, who provides a rap for the ending part of the song! This is unusual. I don't think I was ready to hear rap in a Police song, and I wonder what the other Police fans in the audience were thinking. Still, it makes for a unique performance.
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QUEEN
Comments: This is a VHS tape with a stickie on the box listing the exact title I have given this entry. I received this along with several other tapes a long time ago from a trader (I believe the original total of tapes may have been as high as six, but at the moment I have only found three). I believe I watched one of them. It may have been this one, but I don't remember enough of it to even know that much. Upon request I am willing to take a spin through this or any of the subsequent tapes and provide further details. Earls Court, London (6/6/77): N/A Comments: On VHS. Upon request I can provide further details. Milton Keynes, UK (6/5/82): N/A Comments: On VHS. Upon request I can provide further details.
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YES
Queen's Park Rangers Football Ground, Loftus Road
London, UK (10/5/75) DVD 2: And You and I/Ritual/Roundabout/Sweet Dreams/Yours is No Disgrace Comments: This 2-DVD set comes apparently from "Panorama" Video. The first disc shows the Dolby Digital logo and the Panorama logo and then goes straight into the main programme. The second disc goes to the menu screen after the logos. Both do have menu screens, however, complete with song selection, a badly-spelled and worded biography of the band, and even previews of other Panorama DVDs (not Yes stuff). The quality of the video is really clear with no problems. This video is kind of in the gray area of tradeable stuff. I believe this comes from a Japanese laser disc release of the footage from the early 90s (the Japanese origin probably explains the bad grammar in the biography text). It certainly is pro-shot video of a whole Yes concert from the Relayer tour, and the menu screens look very professional as well. But the fact that (at the time of this writing) it cannot be purchased on Amazon.com suggest to me that this is out of print and thus falls into the category of bootleg, so I will count this as a tradeable item. Which is great, because this is an awesome concert video. This is a complete, pro-shot show with Yes at their performing and musical height (IMO, of course). The show features Patrick Moraz on keyboards instead of Rick Wakeman, and Alan White on drums instead of Bill Bruford, but everyone here turns in a virtuosic, jam-filled performance. The show is not absolutely perfect (another reason why this is probably not an authorized official release): the sound mix on the first disc is a bit odd. To my ears it seems as if the keyboards are too high in the mix, whereas some guitars don't seem high enough (especially poor Chris Squire's bass) and at times Jon's vocals are strangely distant. Jon himself mentions "buzzes" to the crowd at one point. By the second disc, these mixing problems seem to have been sorted out, and the venue has gotten dark enough that the light show gets impressive. There are however some slight periodic speed fluctuations, at least at the beginning of the second disc. Regardless this is a dream set and even with the mixing issues the songs sound pretty great. You get plenty of close-ups of the various band members and not too many of the fans, which is nice. The far shots of the stage have the camera positioned well to the left side, probably because of a big lighting tower in the middle of the grounds that would obstruct the camera's view if it was positioned stage center. This is a fantastic show for those of you who are big fans of Close to the Edge and Relayer, like me. There is also a great performance of "Ritual," the last track from Topographic Oceans. In the encores I was surprised to hear the very old number "Sweet Dreams," and the very welcome "Yours is No Disgrace." "All Good People" and "Long Distance Runaround" are shorter, more acoustic versions. I highly recommend this video to all fans of Yes. |
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