Classic Vinyl Bootleg Revisited: Suki on double vinyls! — YOU CAN TRUST YOUR CAR TO THE MAN WHO WEARS THE STAR from the mid-1970s and NEW YORK CITY SERENADE from the late-1980s (Part 5 of 5)

Doberman is one of the earliest known CD-R bootleg labels, releasing their first ever
Springsteen titles in 1996. Initially, their copies came with CD-R discs with no artwork,
just a hand-written catalog number. Accompanying inserts were stamped with a serial
number in blue. I obtained most of these CD/CD-R imports from Spanish retailers
in the mid-to-late 1990s (see 12/08/2020).

Great Dane (1989—1997), Scorpio (1989—), Crystal Cat (1992—), E Street (1993—1999), and so on. With the advent of underground CD labels, the early and mid-1990s were exciting years for bootleg collectors. We saw not only lots of new releases not bootlegged previously, but also reissue titles to appreciate classic concerts again, often in better quality or at least free of the clicks and pops inherent to vinyl discs. Towards the late 1990s, however, the circumstances substantially changed.

Bootleg CDs could be quite easily homemade using CD-R for audio media and an ink-jet printer for sleeve/label artwork. In addition, unofficial recordings, the sources of bootlegs, became available much faster and for free in non-physical format due to the expansion of the internet. For example, I remember live recordings from the late part of the reunion tour in 2000 were available online for download (mostly in mp3 format) within a few days after the shows. Since then, for me, bootlegs have neither been the same as before (i.e., vinyl and silver-CD releases) nor tasted as sweet as honey, and it's been no fun to collect them anymore. Consequently, I largely lost my interest in bootleg CDs and finally stopped collecting them in 2000 while Mr. Springsteen was still touring with the reunion band and bootleggers produced many CD titles from this tour and other sources.

Before the internet age, The E Street Shuffle: Springsteen & The E Street Band in Performance 1972-1988 (Heylin, C., Gee, S., Labour of Love Productions, U.K.), a 162-page softcover book published in 1989, was an indispensable reference for all known live recordings of the man and his band from inception to the end of 1988. Not to confuse with Heylin's other book of the same title published in 2012 (Constable & Robinson, U.K.), although the subtitle differ from this one (i.e., The Glory Days of Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band).

"Come back, Suki!" the bootlegger (you know who he is) speaks
out for fans and collectors. Shown is the rear side of the folded
slick inserts of HOT COALS FROM THE FIERY FURNACE, released
early in 1976 by Hoffman Avenue Records (HAR).

That being said, by the year 2000, I obtained two more CD and CD-R titles (THE GREATEST PERFORMANCE and FLESH AND FANTASY, respectively) and one downloaded online for free as electronic files (NEW YORK CITY SERENADE) that featured Suki Lahav, in addition to the two Main Point CD releases mentioned in the previous post (10/28/2022). I also had a circulating videotape copy for the Widener Field House show in Chester, PA, on February 6, 1975, although it did not cover the entire concert. Not counting the VHS tape, at that point (more than two decades ago!), I was able to appreciate the following four fascinating performances that never happened again (as Suki left back for Israel and has not come back to the U.S.):

1) October 19, 1974 / Memorial Chapel Concert Hall, Schenectady, NY

• Vinyl: NEW YORK CITY SERENADE (2LP, Exodus Records, ER-002; picture disc edition)
  
• CD: NEW YORK CITY SERENADE (Scorpio, 00-C-046 -A/B; downloaded as mp3 files online for free in 2000).

2) October 29, 1974 / Boston Music Hall, Boston, MA

• CD-R: FLESH AND FANTASY (Doberman, 125/126; an early numbered copy)

3) February 5, 1975 / Main Point, Bryn Mar, PA

• Vinyl: YOU CAN TRUST YOUR CAR TO THE MAN WHO WEARS THE STAR (Singer's Original Double Disks, SODD 001)
• CD: THE SAINT, THE INCIDENT & THE MAIN POINT SHUFFLE (Great Dane, GDR CD 9012)
• CD: YOU CAN TRUST YOUR CAR TO THE MAN WHO WEARS THE STAR (Labour Of Love, Love 022/023)

4) February 23, 1975 / Westbury Music Fair, Westbury, NY

• CD: THE GREATEST PERFORMANCE (Parrot, no number) 

Having listened to the concerts documented in these bootleg CDs, one may notice an interesting fact: Suki was never introduced to the audience whole through these shows, even though the then-two new faces, Roy Bittan and Max Weinberg, were done so together with the other band members during Rosalita. Probably, Springsteen considered her as a guest musician rather than a band member and kept her mysterious and intriguing to the audience.

My Best One: A Bootleg Record Of Bruce Springsteen: that's what
the boxed sentence means. I was surprised when I found my favorite
bootleg featured in a major music magazine in the early 1980s.

Finally, here is a random fact about the original vinyl edition of YOU CAN TRUST YOUR CAR ... that might interest Japanese fans and collectors (an apparent minority among readers/visitors of this blog). Although made in the underground, this bootleg album appeared in one of the 1980 issues of FM Fan, a major Japanese biweekly FM magazine published by Kyodo News (first published in 1966 and ceased publication in December 2001). In a certain period, the magazine issues introduced renowned domestic disc jockeys in a series of the section "The DJ My Musical Mind," where a selected figure showed his or her best choice of record as "My Best One." In that issue, Hiroshi Morinaga (1950—), the featured disc jockey (though his main occupation is a writer/editor), unusually picked up the bootleg with the following comments (in Japanese, of course; translated by this blogger):

"This vinyl record was a gift from Shigeru Izumiya*. It sounds as if being right at the center of the concert hall — spectacular, which you cannot experience with any other ordinary live recording. I listen to the cassette-dubbed copy while riding my motorcycle, which makes me really excited mentally and physically. It's my treasure."
*Japanese folk/rock singer, writer, actor, director, and comic artist (1948—).

Incredible, 42 years ago, he spoke the above words about an unofficial release in a major music publication here in Japan. Yet, as far as I know, among all the DJ personalities featured, he was the only one who chose a bootleg for "My Best One" instead of any legitimate release.

— Back to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, or Part 4.