The five titles of Swedish vinyl bootlegs from the early 1980s. Upper row: (What I believe) the original pressings. Lower row: The reissues from the mid-1980s. |
These words obviously sound exaggerated now, especially for the description on the sound quality. As exemplified above, every review on these bootlegs praises their sound and BLINDED BY THE LIGHT (P. Humphries & C. Hunt,1985) states "superb" or "excellent" all round production for FOLLOW THAT DREAM and TEARDROPS ON THE CITY, respectively. These reputations had built up my expectations only to result in mild disappointment when I first listened to these vinyl sets. In reality, they are audience recordings after all, despite the fact that their sound quality certainly stands above average as THE RIVER Tour bootlegs.
Generally, vinyl bootlegs from this tour are of low quality in terms of sound (Note: I'm referring to those floating around before the release of BORN IN THE USA). This is attributable to lack of excellent audience recordings circulated, no FM-broadcast shows available, and only a few soundboard tapes leaked to be bootlegged: to mention a few examples; NASSAU (12/28/1980; 3LP box) was circulated early and widely but an absolute garbage; EL BOOS EN BARCELONA (4/21/1981; Single LP), questionably high-priced in the vinyl era possibly due to the limited number, is again awful sound; and HUNGRY HEART (UK '81 shows; 3LP) is a rare Japanese boot with horrible sound quality. These are in marked contrast to many of the pre-"THE RIVER" vinyl Brucelegs that are sourced — irrespective of generations — from FM-broadcast or line-recording tapes. BTW, this does not necessary mean that they all sound excellent, but you would agree with my opinion if the sound quality of these Swedish releases were compared to those of, for example, YOU CAN TRUST YOUR CAR and LIVE IN THE PROMISED LAND.
Gate-fold Bruceleg releases from 1970s Upper, LIVE on Coral Records; Lower, LIVE IN THE PROMISED LAND (a.k.a. WINTERLAND 1978) |
The three Swedish titles from THE RIVER European Tour, TEARDROPS ON THE CITY, FOLLOW THAT DREAM and BORN TO BE THE BOSS, have been repressed in mid-1980s (see the picture above), when the popularity of Springsteen, hence the demand of live bootlegs, reached the peak after the huge success of the BORN IN THE USA Tour. So, on the next post, I will compare the two different releases of TEARDROPS ON THE CITY and try to define the original pressing of possibly one of the most sought-after vinyl Bruceleg titles released in early 1980s.
— To be continued.
I’ll have Movi’n up to Stockholm. It’s very great sound and if you listening with earphones you can hear some swedish chat from the audience.
ReplyDeleteThank you for an interesting comment. Based on the track list and matrix numbers, "Movin' Up To Stockholm" and more famous/popular "Follow That Dream" are different pressings of the same concert, using the same audience-sourced master tapes (according to C. Hunt's bootleg section on the Blinded By The Light book). I often thought "Moving Up" sounded a little better than "Follow," but I thought that was just because the masters were cut at higher levels (= louder) on the former than the latter. However, having closely listened to the sound, particularly focusing on the audience, I felt that master tapes used for these vinyl bootlegs differed. What do you think, and do you know anything about audience masters used for making the two bootleg titles?
DeleteOn my copy of Movi’n up to Stockholm there is hand-etched on the dead wax area,letters A B,C D,E F for every side of each record.
ReplyDeleteMine also has the hand-written matrix numbers A to F on Sides One to Six (exactly, each letter is flanked by two hyphens: for example, -A-, on Side One). Each white label is marked just A, B, or C combined with 1 or 2 as a side indication (e.g., Disc 1 carries labels printing A1 or A2).
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