I play records every now and then in Vegas bars and the Clash is always a safe bet. Popular with the Warped tour set, the Hotrod/Tattoo set, the 77 forever set, the I-got-a liberal arts degree in college Loolapoolza set ...etc.etc. The only problem being that, as a snobby, elitist record collector, you tire of things that you've heard more than three or four times. I've looked around for quality Clash bootlegs a couple of times- so as to find some playable, familiar material that had the uncommon freshness of something that isn't readily available. This Japan set is so readily available that you can find people hawking it on Amazon. Nevertheless, it is not official product. There is a recently issued live document (audio only) of a 1982 The Clash opening for the Who. I haven't got around to hearing this so I can't vouch.
This set was pro shot for TV and is very well filmed and edited. The quality of the image is fair...the file that I pulled from some random torrent had the following specs: The_CLASH_Live_Tokyo_1982-DVD_RiP_Fr_DivX_HQ_AC3_2.0-OBG_IADV.avi 608X448, 700 MB, 29.97 fps, 1588 kbps
By the way. in Gspot, what are Len, Qf, Sar, Dar, and Par???
I expect that the only thing that has held this back from being sold through official channels is that the guitars sound dismally weak- thin and quiet. Really a shame because otherwise the performance is strong.
1. London Calling 2. Safe European Home 3. (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais 4. Brand New Cadillac 5. Charlie Don't Surf 6. Clampdown 7. This is Radio Clash 8. Armagideon Time 9. Jimmy Jazz 10. Tommy Gun 11. Fujiyama Mama 12. Police On My Back 13. White Riot
Vocals on Fujiyama Mama are courtesy Pearl E. Gates AKA Pearl Harbour...a punk goddess apparently linked with Simonon about this time. Although I've taken a few stabs at becoming more familiar with the Clash beyond the official releases, I haven't gone too deeply into it. I can recall two other things that I've examined. I also have a video of a 1980 Paris show which I vaguely remember as perhaps superior to this...in terms of audio quality and energy level...I also have an audio boot of a Bond's Casino night which is of superb quality straight through and is actually holds the interest of a casual fan through the course of the whole show. The only thing to stop anyone from reviewing hundreds of hours of Clash show recordings needs nothing but bandwidth and time...For HERE is a whopping collection of links to such a collection, all in both MP3 and lossless!
My loss of enthusiasm for rambling on about bootlegs is well timed. Because what is there to say that hasn't already been said about Bob Dylan? There are more than enough life long fans and scholars writing word after word after word about all of what he's done and what it all means. With Dylan, I actually enjoy the interpretations, the persona, more than I do listening to the songs. I got more entertainment out of Don't Look Back or No Direction Home than the LPs... A buddy called me up and asked me if I had "Eat the Document" and I had to check; somethings I collect without really remembering and knowing what I have. Ridiculous, no? Whatever keeps you preoccupied...I had the Hard Rain TV special and the Isle of Wright, but that's it for Dylan DVDs. It showed up in the mail a few weeks later.
My impression was: it's a year later than Don't Look Back, and the success is now showing signs of becoming tedious. Whereas in the earlier film, Dylan seems to find the Dylan phenomenon a little surprising and precarious. As for the electric controversy. What was at stake? What were they looking for that they were disappointed to lose? What was different, before and after? The birth of rock; with Dylan's conversion to be considered one of the signs...The death of rock; for which now a case could now be made - But of course, there are still bands, concerts, guitars, fame...What is different, before and after?
This disc's edition ("the videotape network") of the movie looks O.K. but the materials could really do with a little restoration work. The document was taped from a T.V broadcast- moderately sharp with rather faded color. The film itself is almost an hour. The disc I have has a considerable number of extras, they are:
dylan lennon conversation 21:09 cash documentary excerpt 3:30 johnny cash show appearance 8:17 '75 john hammond tribute 17:48 '75 NBC News clip :54 '75 ABC News clip 3:24 '79 SNL 7:01
Bob Dylan inaugurated the bootleg forty years ago...Since then, law breaking chroniclers have been continuously contributing to the public image of what the man has done. This has given birth to one of the two or three best concert databases I have seen: DVDylan. The beauty of its design is superb- A testament to the efforts of the obsessive-compulsive and their different kind of recording industry- as the consumer of commodities model of audience to a music itself undergoes transformation.
Images...some video on your hard drive that wants looking at...some vinyl LP records in the garage that compel you to find them a new owner. There are, you know, images and real life. The one often a denial of the other...Something keeps telling you to not settle for the image, to somehow get to the place where things change you and can themselves be changed. I review this because of it's brevity, mostly. I had the thing on in the background when I was reading something else. Apparently, Lush fans have compiled a whopping 5 DVD set of Lush footage. The person who upped the torrent for this TV show performance was doing it to provide an upgrade of material that was is in this collection. Such compulsion. Love for a rock band. People you saw twenty years ago on telly or at a gig and never actually met- though perhaps the bunch doing all this collecting were the inner circle of the earliest days. Those who were as secretly as instrumental for the existence of Lush as the musicians themselves. How far back in time does this sort of thing go?...A couple of centuries earlier there was written poetry and vicarious relationships from what people read. Cults of Hugo, Byron and the like...Before that, there are probably only political leaders, athletes, soldiers of renown, people you knew only through a crowd...saints as well, yes. Like, you go into a Hard Rock Cafe and see John Lennon's shirt behind glass- the shirt of Saint Lennon In 91, I had the Gala CD, which I remember for "sunbathing" which had really complementary production on the sparse wisp of a song. I did some time at a college radio station and probably heard a few seconds of all of their tracks. If Lush is unknown to you, I'd first up recommend the remixes of the "Last Night" single. I hate strings in pop- but damn if they don't fly in perfect over the sequenced rhythm tracks in this supremely pretty tune.
The group do a good job with the first song in this gig, but I feel like the singer goes a little flat in the second. Still, nice enough distraction for the length of the clip.
If this blog were made up reviews of things you could buy, there would be a reason for it....Consumer reviews...Where can you get the most delivery for you entertainment dollar? But all of this can't be bought, and the reason for reviewing it is elusive. The reason for writing any of this escapes me: Why do I bother? Time better spent elsewhere, perhaps. I thought, the other day, using Exactfile, that the hashes used on the files could be their unique entries in a database- such that every digital file in which a certain celebrity is tagged would be uniquely identified and then you could eventually have the complete collection of every existing moment in which that celebrity was recorded. I thought for a moment about learning enough MySQL to construct the basis of such a thing...with the idea that understanding it might eventually be useful in some other way. Eventually such databases will exist not just for celebrities, but for everyday people.
Speaking of databases, I paid my first visit to songkick, the other day, which seems pretty well poised to beat pollstar as the most information rich, live rock show resource...pretty fascinating. Wondering about how this is all going to spiral into the future makes you wonder what kind of interface exists for Sporting Events...Team stuff would change its geography as seasons progress
the tags could be better, some documentaries and music videos get mixed in with the search...but it's an easier way to surf google video than most
also. there is obviously some commercially available material interspersed through here, although I expect that the uploads are pretty compromised, qualitywise
# FULL CONCERT : Daft Punk @ Coachella 2006 # FULL CONCERT: The Psychedelic Furs Live (House Of ... # FULL CONCERT: Coldplay Glastonbury Festival 2005 # FULL CONCERT: Aerosmith Live In Chicago # FULL CONCERT: Metallica 2006 Live @ Rock Am Ring # FULL CONCERT: Rammstein - Live aus Berlin # FULL CONCERT: Motion City Soundtrack # FULL CONCERT: Dio - Holy Diver Tour # FULL CONCERT: Metallica 2006 Live @ Rock Am Ring # FULL CONCERT: Rammstein - Live aus Berlin # FULL CONCERT: Dio - Holy Diver Tour # FULL CONCERT: The Smiths - Live in Madrid # FULL CONCERT: Radiohead @ MTV 10 Spot # FULL CONCERT: Michael Schenker Group - Rockpalast # FULL CONCERT: Grateful Dead 04-26-1977 # FULL CONCERT: The Doors - Live In Concert # FULL CONCERT: Beck - The Information (Live) # FULL CONCERT: The Ramones @ Musikladen 1978 # FULL CONCERT: Jimi Hendrix - Live at Woodstock '69... # FULL CONCERT: Van Halen (1983) # FULL CONCERT: Rick Danko & Paul Butterfield # FULL CONCERT: Oasis live in Boston # FULL CONCERT: G3 Live in Tokyo 2005 # FULL CONCERT: Yngwie Malmsteen - Concerto Suite in... # FULL CONCERT: Wolfmother - "Wolfmother" Album Liv... # FULL CONCERT: Queen - Live Aid (1985) # FULL CONCERT: Asia Live 80s # FULL CONCERT: Deep Purple - Machine Head Tour 1972... # FULL CONCERT: Mother's Finest - Live @ RockPalast ... # FULL CONCERT: Alice In Chains MTV Unplugged # FULL CONCERT: Crossroads Guitar Festival # FULL CONCERT: The Sex Pistols - Last Live Concert # FULL CONCERT: Pink Floyd Live # FULL CONCERT -Gorillaz - Demon Days # FULL CONCERT: Neil Young - BBC Concert 1971 # FULL CONCERT: Red Hot Chili Peppers - Stadium Arca... # FULL CONCERT: Dream Theater - Live At The Budokan # FULL CONCERT: AC/DC From 1977 # FULL CONCERT: Metallica - Concert 9-10 May 1997 - ... # FULL CONCERT: Genesis - The Charisma, Silent Sun P... # FULL CONCERT: The Doors Live - Hollywood Bowl 1968...
I hope it's unnecessary to mention that neither I nor fuzzy tv posted any of this material...if anybody has a problem with it they should talk to google
In 1970, the musicians playing for James Brown walked out on him when he refused to meet certain demands about their employment. Brown had assembled some top notch players in his rise to success, but he was undaunted by their departure. He sent his jet airplane for the Collins brothers in Ohio, and they joined him onstage the next night without a single rehearsal. In the months that followed, the new band recorded "Sex Machine," "Super Bad," "...Get Involved," "Soul Power," and "Talking Loud..." Brown recorded a lot of hits before and and after this period, but the case could be made that this is his funkiest material. The musicians play off of one another with such attentiveness that Mr. Brown's on-the-fly intuitions about what should happen next become the structure of the compositions. The tracks from this time period are compiled in unedited form on the Funk Power CD. (I've a few dozen James Brown C.D.s, and this is far and away the most solid) On many other discs, you can hear fade out edits of these tracks. In fact, on the 45 rpm singles themselves the songs were often split in the middle to fit on two sides of the record. The full length performances are what you need. You can disagree with me, but you might as well be talking to a wall: the wall that your back is up against, while everyone else in 14+ minutes into the groove. Hipp-O's limited edition collection of the complete James Brown singles is sure to become an expensive second hand item, (And I'd really enjoy reading the extensive liner notes by the always informative Alan Leeds) but splitting these songs wrecks their momentum. What the world really needs, and I cross my fingers that they exist and that I might hear them some day, are alternative takes of these tracks. Even a few minutes of a flubbed chorus or misplayed verse. Because, of course, all you need is a good bar or two; two second fragments of JB material has been put to use to make music for thousands. If there is anything in the vaults, irregardless of its completeness. there is certainly an interest and market.
By 1971, many of the prodigal players had returned to the fold. March saw the band in Paris, where the show was recorded for an album that was not released until decades later. The bootleg video that I possess is footage from a TV broadcast of the same show that appears on a officially released CD....Whereas the sound on the CD is immaculate, the DVD is muddy and noisy and is screaming out to be cleaned up and married to the "Love Power" audio. The show is a monster: When you simply hear the audio, the speed with which the band tears through the older songs make them less satisfying than the studio recordings. When you watch the concert however, you see that the band is playing to the crowd and knows exactly how much they can take, what they expect, and when to deliver it to them. This is a well-honed showtime machine, the bases covered like a Swiss army knife: a go go dancer, a string section, the driving horns, the charismatic Bobby Byrd, two drummers. and, exclusive to this brief lineup: the raw edged Collins brothers...really holding it down on the one. As for Brown himself-as of 1971 he is pushing 40. And while he exerts more energy during this concert than most people do in a month, can it be said that the peak of his physical powers are a little while past?..Honestly- on dance moves and vocal effort, this is all as good as Boston 68, and the material is better.... the show and the band itself far, far more energetic.
There are a few other films of Mr. Brown in which he himself, personally, may have been a little closer to the top of his game. Shout Factory has finally put together a disc of the long awaited TAMI show and it is going to be available in a few short days. Rick Rubin has speculated that it might not only be the greatest filmed performance of James Brown, but the greatest filmed music performance period.
The Hardest Working Man in Show Business can be seen performing on a few other DVDs- none of which I've managed to see. I got the 68 Boston show five years ago as a badly cut up bootleg, but I haven't yet taken a look at the 3 DVD I Got the Feeling, with its documentary and some 68 Apollo footage...
There is also this: ---James Brown On Television Volume 1: The Sixties - 2 hours - "Hollywood A-Go-Go", "Music Scene", , "Where The Action Is", "The Hollywood Palace", "The Mike Douglas Show", I spotted it on a Bomp list a while back. Hard to find any more specific details or review about it anywhere.
I've heard the bootleg of Zaire '74, which is a stellar performance- a peak for Brown perhaps, he acknowledges this by denying it during the concert itself. Not yet seen Soulpower, the documentary- which I've read contains three songs from Brown's set, and one each from the other performers...
On the outskirts of odds and ends, there is a BodyHeat disc that I pulled from a torrent. 4 episodes, I believe...Of interest more for the enjoyment of the dancers than anything live show or particular to JB... Further out than that, Alan Leeds, JB's tour manager and archivist, makes mention of complete 1966 and 1967 shows HERE. Nothing concrete is said about them beyond that they exist, but the general discussion is of interest to fans of Brown or Prince, by whom Leeds was employed for many years.
Traders with other footage have made reference to their discoveries HERE and HERE
One of the trader's lists above mentions that he has two versions of this show, one with upgraded audio. As to which I have, I can't be certain. As I mentioned above, marrying this footage to the official CD release should already have been checked off on some industrious bootleggers to-do list. I downloaded exactfile and tried to run it on my DVD while it was in the drive, but the program crashed before I got any numbers... I'd like to have MD5s of all my reviews, so those of you who are playing along at home can compare your versions. I don't want to be forced to rip my boots to my harddrive in order to do this, however. Until a solution presents itself, we are going to have to refer to the menu shots, as I expect that these would be altered in the event of an upgrade
I've been using this blog as an excuse to hear myself talk, which is perfectly fine when I'm reviewing something which is not that great, but here I'm going to lay off a bit and focus on the facts. If I used the occasion of a Slayer review to say something lame, I'd be pretty ashamed of myself. If you perform music in front of people, you should be familiar with what I'm going to be talking about here- the greatness of Slayer. I don't care what genre of music you are trying to make a name for yourself with: a live Slayer show is worthy of your respect. If you don't think so, send me a link to whatever it is that you think is so great and then I will laugh at your stupidity.
There are two currently available dvds of official Slayer product. Buy them.
Now that this is out of the way. Let's try to survey video of the early years of Slayer. First, here's a gigography, not the most interactive web 2.0 thing that I have ever seen, but some solid effort has gone into this and it feels pretty complete.
The next thing you can do is head over to dime a dozen and pick up:Slayer - 1991-06-28 Madison Square Garden If you are a fucking retard, stay away from dime a dozen. There is an etiquette to live show torrent sites and you need to hang back and get an idea about how it all works before you jump in and start annoying people...I keep my own mouth shut there, because I lack the technical savvy to hold forth on video compression, ripping and burning tools, checksums, encoding methods, etc. etc.
o.k. so now, here goes: five "reviews"...in my hands there are DVDRs of four slayer shows and then, of course, I've just got the show mentioned above:
dynamo festival /// eindhoven, holland 05/28/85 the stone /// san francisco 11/03/86 the ritz /// new york 12/06/86 felt forum /// new york 08/31/88 madison square garden///new york 06/28/91 For each show, I'm going to give you two screenshots, the setlist, a youtube link (which I have NOT uploaded, so the quality could be better or worse than what I possess), and then a couple sentences describing the quality of the footage on the DVDrs. Upgrades are the name of the game with Slayer boots and, frankly, I'm going to have to rewrite this whole post after I've done a little bit more research. I expect that everything that I have so far has been subsequently made available in much better quality. I guess that this review would be most helpful if I learned how to generate MD5s for my discs, that way I could establish my bearings as far as inferior versus superior versions goes.
dynamo festival /// eindhoven, holland 05/28/85
1.Hell Awaits 2.Aggressive Perfector 3.Captor Of Sin 4.Praise Of Death 5.Haunting The Chapel 6.Final Command 7.Crypts Of Eternity 8.Necrophiliac 9.Black Magic/Die By The Sword 10.Hardening Of The Arteries 11.Fight 'Till Death 12.The Antichrist 13.At Dawn They Sleep 14.Drum solo/Show No Mercy 15.Evil Has No Boundaries 16.Chemical Warfare 17.Kill Again
My copy is mastered on a standalone. It's multicamera and the image is fair...The close ups are decent, but when the camera pulls back to show the whole band, there's not a lot of detail. The sound is only a very narrow range of frequencies: all you hear are the toms and snares and washed out guitars. Evilaggression, the youtube uploader, has married this footage to a soundboard recording. This is the only way you should consider watching this.
the stone /// san francisco 11/03/86
1 Raining blood 2 Angel of death 3 Die by the sword 4 Praise of death 5 Criminally insane 6 Necrophiliac 7 Captor of sin 8 Reborn 9 Post mortem 10 Black magic 11 Epidemic 12 Hell awaits 13 Chemical warfare 14 At dawn they sleep 15 Altar of sacrifice 16 Jesus saves
I've got a standalone mastered copy of this which shares the same disc with an 89 Death angel show. It's a single audience shot. The colors and resolution are a tiny bit better than the dynamo footage. Likewise, there is a little more range to the audio, although, I think there might have been more intermittent noise on this.
once again, the few years since I've gotten this disc have seen some upgrades go by. As above, evilagression has posted bits from a much superior version of this to youtube.
the ritz /// new york 12/06/86 1. Raining Blood 2. Reborn 3. At Dawn They Sleep 4. Praise Of Death 5. Criminally Insane 6. Necrophiliac 7. Necrophobic 8. Die By The Sword 9. Black Magic 10. Altar Of Sacrifice 11. Jesus Saves 12. Postmortem 13. Epidemic 14. Chemical Warfare 15. Hardening Of The Arteries 16. Hell Awaits/ 17. Angel Of Death/ 18. Evil Has No Boundaries Stand alone authored, single audience camera show; sharpness is lacking but the color range is impressive...often the fog and the lights make the stage look like the thrown open gates of hell. In front of which you can see the silhouettes of Satan's minions flying upside down through the air and caught up within complete thrash hysteria. Sound is very good on this boot- it could use a little more bass perhaps, but for an 1986 bootleg it has plenty.
if this youtube upload is an upgrade from what I have the improvements are not as extreme as those above:
felt forum /// new york 08/31/88 1. South Of Heaven 2. Raining Blood 3. Silent Scream 4. At Dawn They Sleep 5. Read Between The Lies 6. Fight Till Death 7. Mandatory Suicide 8. Kill Again 9. Behind The Crooked Cross 10. Postmortem 11. Reborn 12. Die By The Sword 13. Alter Of Sacrifice 14. Jesus Saves 15. Chemical Warfare 16. Ghosts Of War 17. Angel Of Death
My version of this has a menu and a bonus track of "chemical warfare" in 85...video is an AUD recording, shot from center rear. Taper is at a pretty large distance from the stage and his zoom can get terribly jerky at times. Graphic of Slayer logo shows up on the screen every once in a while. Sound is above average. Beginning of South of Heaven is missing, also a chunk out of Altar Of Sacrifice. This show is notorious for the finale, in which the crowd tears apart the seats and sends them flying across the concert hall.
In this case, watching my dvdr is marginally better than the youtube footage- probably only because youtube compression has softened the contrasts and sharpness somewhat. sound's a bit more muddy as well
Setlist:: 1 Hell Awaits (cuts in) 2 The Antichrist 3 War Ensemble 4 South of Heaven 5 Raining Blood 6 Altar of Sacrifice 7 Jesus Saves 8 Dead Skin Mask 9 Seasons in the Abyss 10 Mandatory Suicide 11 Angel of Death Just gave this a quick once over, but I can tell you that it's fairly good sounding, some reverb, of course, given the room size. There is a little bit of shakyness and fists in the way which occurs from time to time, but overall, it's shot quite well. The top image is full zoom out and the bottom is full zoom in. The visuals cut out for two minutes during angel of death, but other than that, most all of the show was caught. There are audience shots of the unruly NY crowd but mostly the shooter keeps his attention front and center
So there you have it, just the facts. I hope that this is of some assistance to the Wehrmacht massive...
I found some guy who loves Slayer more than me, if you yourself are a completest...this should keep you busy for a while SLAYER 3/28/83 Live at The Roxy, Los Angeles, CA 44 Aud B+ SLAYER 7/1/83 Live at Woodstock Theater, Cypress, CA 27 Aud B+ SLAYER 8/27/83 Live at Woodstock Theater, Cypress, CA 29 Aud B SLAYER 12/28/83 Live at The Concert Factory, Costa Mesa, CA 37 Aud B SLAYER 1/21/84 Live at The Roxy, Los Angeles, CA 29 Aud B+ SLAYER 3/17/84 Live at Ruthie's Inn, Berkeley, CA 43 Club A- SLAYER 11/19/84 Live at Blondie's, Detroit, MI (filmed on stage) 35 Aud A SLAYER 11/20/84 Live at Ukranian Hall, Flint, MI 48 Aud B+ SLAYER 4/3/85 Live at Studio 54, NYC (4 live plus interviews) 21 Pro A+ SLAYER 5/26/85 Live at Heavy Sounds, Poperinge, Belgium (sndboard audio) 64 Aud A SLAYER 5/28/85 Live at Dynamo, Eindhoven, Holland 94 Aud A SLAYER 9/6/85 Live at The Country Club, Reseda, CA 72 Club B+ SLAYER 9/7/85 Live at The Country Club, Reseda, CA 90 Aud B+ SLAYER 11/3/86 Live at The Stone, San Francisco, CA 78 Aud A- SLAYER 12/6/86 Live at The Ritz, New York City 68 Club A- SLAYER 1/27/87 Live at Massey Hall, Toronto, Canada 27 Aud A SLAYER 2/9/87 Live at Music Hall, Cleveland, OH 31 Aud A- SLAYER 8/24/88 Live at The Agora Ballroom, Cleveland, OH 92 Aud A- SLAYER 8/31/88 Live at The Felt Forum, NYC 75 Aud A SLAYER 9/20/88 Live at The Hammersmith Odeon, London, England 17 Pro A- SLAYER 9/22/88 Live at Volkshaus, Zurich, Switzerland 84 Aud B+ SLAYER 1/20/89 Live at Sporthalle, Boblingen, Germany 79 Aud B SLAYER 12/13/90 Live at Moda Hall, Osaka, Japan 105 Aud B+ SLAYER 2/11/91 Live at RPI Fieldhouse, Troy, NY 84 Aud A
So yeah just some brief comments on some early Slayer shows. Did you want me to provide an in depth, overall review of Slayer for you? O.K. Here goes: SLAYER RULES!!!!!
Decades after there being an actual band of the name, the Beatles quite recently appeared once again across the official networks of consciousness. Last September marked, almost certainly, the very last time that their catalog of recordings will be remastered as individual discs to be made available as physical items on a store shelf. (The most interesting aspect of the reissue, for golden ear, audiophile types, was a USB drive version, which includes FLAC files that were recorded/playback at 24 bit resolution: for some of the material, a sharper digital image than anything made so far- I don't think there was any DVDA/SVCD type releases in the past...) The bigger event for the marketing blitz, was that the band's music has finally arrived for the wildly popular Rock Band.
I've played Guitar Hero. At first you thought it was going to be a hula hoop/Rubik's cube type thing: but the bigger picture is that: Bands are out; games are in- as far as large amounts of money changing hands is concerned...
From International Business Times: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has been successful in crossing the coveted $1 billion mark (£625 million) in global revenues according to its publisher, Activision Blizzard Inc. and is the latter's third "billion dollar-plus" franchise after Guitar Hero and World of Warcraft...Among entertainment franchises, the only ones ahead of it are Titanic which earned $1.8 billion, Avatar, which has raked in $1.3 billion, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King which made $1.12 billion and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest which earned $1.07 billion.
A billion dollars = 15 million disks, a long time has passed since a stereo audio recording has been taken to the register that many times....
Hard to say what the total revenue has been for five decades of the Beatles "franchise" What IS evident is that it is being forced to alter its form into a franchise in order to wrest people's attentions from the franchises which threaten to eclipse it.
For those who hardly know anything of the band. Let me introduce these discs by saying that the Beatles were to break up in September of 70...The period covered in the material of these discs captures their attempt to reconcile their differences by retreating from the method of each member recording each their own music in the studio, apart from all the others, and returning to an ensemble recording of the songs together in one take as a group. The material that resulted from this, the songs that were recorded and a movie- were not immediately satisfactory to them. The material was released as a LP and into theaters only after they disbanded.
Obviously, Wikipedia is there to flesh this out...Moving on to address those who know all of it: What is the material on these discs? To give you an informed review I would have had to have seen "Let It Be", the movie (which is itself only available as a bootleg as of this writing) and I would have had to have seen the Anthology documentary. Then, I would be able to situate what's presented here with a little more context. Unfortunately, I haven't done that for you.
There are three things on these discs: The stereo mix, outtakes, and promos/extras. The stereo mix is: If you like the group, and you like the songs from this period, you're definitely going to want this material: it's the rooftop concert plus full takes of other songs The outtakes are a different story, while quality somewhat varies, by bootleg standards they are pristine...They mostly seem to be black and white prints of film that was shot for a potential theatrical release. They have been matched up to the actual studio recordings and the sound quality is very high. The problem is that they are too fragmentary...There will be 45 seconds from one camera- The same 45 seconds from another camera- and then no more of the material, kind of tedious. And random cut-ins into fly-on-the-wall with banal, distracted attempts at getting everyone to the same moment for accomplishing something...Lighting cigarettes or mentioning anecdotes in a small-talk-no specific message sort of way...It is kind of peculiar watching the everyday people moments which subsequently had to be edited away from ones that would be iconic and contribute to their considerable fame. Along the way, there are glimpses of them actively working out the arrangements to the music. Just out of respect for how ubiquitous these songs became, I'd imagine anyone who has ever played an instrument would feel a spark of curiosity watching the conditions of their origin.
The Promos consist of some of this material printed to color stock for various purposes, like the Let It Be Naked thing. It makes you wonder what physical material all the masters of Beatles stuff is on...how it is safeguarded and preserved. Eventually, digital necromancy will be employed upon all of it, as evidenced by the Anthology John Lennon collaborations long after the fact. Witness Avatar's Cameron talking about how a young Clint Eastwood will be appearing in movies soon. Likewise, once everything in Apple's vault is scanned, perhaps the Beatles will come out with some new 21st century tunes, virtual Idoru style
If the tracklisting in the cover photo is interesting and you're looking for a more in depth description of the material, it's here in the BootlegZone, a site which makes a gesture towards rock bootlegs generally, but which is primarily concerned with exchanging unofficial Beatle information. The scholar, and the obsessed, have hundreds of hours of Beatles audio studio material that they could wade through. Some boffin named John C. Winn has published some books on the subject, and at least one long lived fanzine is devoted to the minutiae. How to address the monumental popularity of the Beatles...and monumental popularity in general? I already adopted the Debord front for the Michael Jackson and Elvis entries, so it's time to let it rest. I was reading an Aquarius Records review (some very accomplished writing throughout this site, though often a little too generous and enthusiastic) of the Nirvana Box set where they come out and say :"See, everyone loves Nirvana. Everyone. Those of you who say you don't are just trying to be 'cool'. Sort of like the people who talk about how the Beatles suck. The Beatles did not suck. They wrote more perfect pop songs than any band in the history of rock and roll...It's not cool to pretend you don't like Nirvana. Not at all. In fact, it's unbelievably UNCOOL..." and it goes on with an intelligent author speaking as simply as possible to communicate a gut level candor. I can't address that directly (other than mentioning that any Aquarius record of the week is more interesting than the Beatles)- , but I can start by saying that I've heard these songs more than enough times...There's so much else that's so very great that the Beatles popularity, to radios and supermarkets, at least, is inordinate with their talent. Further than that, the tedium of the same damn songs is now the soundtrack for tedium- for what is unimaginative and normal in life...You can also take aim at the tyranny of the Beatles' legacy by imaging RockStar lives that you would rather have lived- playing along with the whole vicarious wish fulfillment nature of the whole pop star edifice...
Audiences have grown with population size, the spread of western communication technologies and the globalization/standardization of everyday life: Mccdonalds, X-Box. The Beatles...The Beatles rode in on the emergence of all this and now it threatens to be the ocean that supersedes them- though in some sense it never will. Because rock music, like portrait painting and theater, is no longer Pop- no longer some novel thing that people look to as NOW, as what's new and happening...It is dead. Programs...Games...Networks of people communicating via computers...are today.
As for Rock Band, will it ever, in and of itself, contribute to the existence of sounds that are worth listening to? DJ Little Steven chimed in with how it might be the savior for the oldies AKA rock and roll...Combined sales of GH and RB top $2.3 bill...Aerosmith Rock Band has reportedly earned the group more money than the sale of anyone of their single LPs...More interestingly, one could hope that it might dovetail into networks upon which people are actually making music. In the Harmonix foundation story, the guy relates how once he got rid of the improvisation idea- just had people trying to accurately follow along, the doors of success were flung open. Perhaps they can backpedal from there and implement some new forum for creativity. I haven't scrutinized their new Rock Band Network initiative, but Kirn over @ Create Digital Musichas, which suggests that there is some possible emerging novel avenue for creativity to the whole thing.
There is nothing on this site for sale and no links to anything that you can download. If I have embedded a file that has been uploaded to youtube, rest assured that I am not the person who uploaded the file, neither do I condone such behavior. The media discussed here are materials that have no existing commercial distribution. For many years, people have been making copies of these discs and sending to them to one another through the mail. All of this is facilitated by websites that are set up for that purpose, which I can refer you to if you are interested. The legality of such things is interesting to me, but I am no lawyer, and therefore I cannot tell you whether selling, trading, owning, seeing, or describing any of these things entails copyright infringement or criminal behavior. I am not too very interested in trading at the present time. If you have underground videos of things that are not rock and roll but more strictly subversive or psychedelic, I'd be pleased to hear from you. Keep it rolling...
if thinking is merely plagiarism, progress is mechanically reproducible
..............................................................................................
evolution is a function of surprise
............................................................................
WWW.MOTIVESBEYONDREASON.NET
an index to whatever sites I'm entering information into
This Japan set is so readily available that you can find people hawking it on Amazon. Nevertheless, it is not official product. There is a recently issued live document (audio only) of a 1982 The Clash opening for the Who. I haven't got around to hearing this so I can't vouch.
old through official channels is that the guitars sound dismally weak- thin and quiet. Really a shame because otherwise the performance is strong.
+in+global+revenues+according+to+its+publisher&client=pub-4099951843714863&forid=1&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&cof=GALT:%23999999;GL:1;DIV:%23FFFFFF;VLC:333333;AH:center;BGC:FFFFFF;LBGC:FFFFFF;ALC:0033CC;LC:0033CC;T:000000;GFNT:FFFFFF;GIMP:FFFFFF;LH:100;LW:100;L:http://www.hyperwords.net/hy-for-google.gif;S:http://www.hyperwords.net/;LP:1;FORID:1;&hl=en){kind=link}