Classic Vinyl Bootleg Revisited: FOLLOW THAT DREAM 3LP (Part 2 of 4)

Silver pressed CD reproduction of the two famous Swedish
vinyl bootlegs. The three triple-CD sets are released in the
early 1990s, then followed by some CD/CD-R titles which
attempt to improve the vinyl-sourced sound quality.

As almost always happened with reputable bootleg titles, FOLLOW THAT DREAM had been pirated and re-bootlegged since its original release in late 1981 or early 1982 from North Europe, not only on vinyl but also on CD/CD-R, due to the unrecoverable loss of the master recordings. As a result, several variant copies are still in circulation in the second-hand market and frequently turn up on internet auction. The original release, though quite hard to find nowadays, is easily distinguished from most of the vinyl reproduction by comparing the differences in dead wax-matrix numbers, label color and design, and sleeve format and print quality (see a photo collage of these variants below). As described concisely in the bootleg section of Blinded By The Light (P. Humphries & C. Hunt, 1985, Plexus, London), the original pressing came on black vinyls with black labels. The photo used inside the gate-fold sleeve was a spectacular color shot of band-on-stage, rather than of Bruce alone (leaning on a microphone stand) which was used for most of those reboots.
 

Examples of various non-original vinyl copies of FOLLOW THAT DREAM that typically came with plain colored labels and featured the "Bruce alone" photo inside the gate-fold sleeve. The single-pocket sleeve version is also known to exist. Note that these are not from my collection.
 

Classic Vinyl Bootleg Revisited: FOLLOW THAT DREAM 3LP (Part 1 of 4)

Which one is the earlier release?  Shown above are two different issues both of which carry black labels on
the waxes and feature an on-stage band shot on the inside of the full-color gate-fold sleeve (the two apparent
prerequisites for the original). The original edition of this classic bootleg title from the early 1980s was and
still is highly sought after by Bruceleg collectors.

Generally in the vinyl era, THE RIVER tour was poorly represented by bootleg releases in terms of sound quality, at least partly due to the lack of excellent live recordings. This situation was in contrast to that for live bootlegs released in the 1970s or during and after the BORN IN THE U.S.A. tour: many of the early underground releases, as exemplified by a series of DARKNESS tour bootlegs, are sourced from radio broadcasts of live performance (thus, at least they are listenable), while audience recordings from the BORN IN THE U.S.A. tour have overall improved the sound quality compared with those from THE RIVER tour.