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

Two matrix codes on
the Disc 1 deadwax.

This concludes a short series of blog posts on one of a few classic vinyl bootlegs from the 1981 European leg of THE RIVER tour. It has long been said that, like the sister release TEARDROPS ON THE CITY, the original audience recordings no longer exist that were used for making this bootleg. This makes it distinguish from almost all of the other vinyl underground releases whose source recordings have been successfully digitized and circulated. So, collectors of live recordings and bootleg maniacs still highly value the original pressing of this old vinyl stuff.

An excerpt from "Stockholm 81 - Revisited", an essay by Drutten and Gena (2002), which mentions the loss of master concert recordings (taken from the booklet accompanying the vinyl-sourced remastered CD-R release by the Piggham Records).

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

The triumph success of BORN IN THE USA has not only delivered the plethora of new live bootlegs mainly from the 1984-85 world tour, but also brought back the past recordings of previously bootlegged live concerts. Such revival issues include FOLLOW THAT DREAM, TEARDROPS ON THE CITY, and BORN TO BE THE BOSS, the famous THE RIVER tour bootleg trio from Sweden originally released in the early 1980s. I remember these re-releases hit the Japanese market around summer 1987 (see the last post for a scan of a mail-order catalog issued by a Japanese bootleg retailer). The bootleggers reproduced the original LPs, including cover arts and record labels, fairly well when compared with rather crummy earlier reproductions that appeared soon following the original releases (again, see the last post).       

The artist's name is removed from all six side labels on the three discs of the 1987
re-release (right). There is, I guess, the possibility that bootleggers might have
modified the labels intentionally to differentiate the two editions, because except
for the labels, the reissue faithfully reproduces the original artwork and design.

As a result, bootleg collectors and auction sellers often refer mistakenly to these three 1987 re-releases as the originals. That said, several distinct differences exist between the original and the faithful reissues. The subsequent sections explain what I have noticed by closely examining my copies of the two editions of FOLLOW THAT DREAM, just like I did before for TEARDROPS, a companion release to this.

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.

Collecting log: BORN IN THE U.S.A. LP ー Matrix numbers of the earliest U.S. pressing and an error copy with off-centered labels (Part 5 of 5)

The domestic release date (June 21, 1984) is
stamped in red on the folded Japanese insert
and given in the Japanese imperial year format
[(Showa) 59 = 1984].

Before starting this topic, I had never thought that I would write five consecutive blog posts about one of the most, if not the most, mediocre collectibles in his entire vinyl LP catalogue (mass-produced regular pressings, I mean), and this is the last one. In the last two posts, I paid particular attention to the dead wax width of various different pressings of the mega-hit album with the early regular U.S. pressing as a reference, since this physical parameter is an undistinguished but fundamental determinant for vinyl disc variations. Then, what was unexpected to me was that at least a few non-U.S. pressings, such as Filipino and Dutch, are in fact made using the U.S. disc masters, as indicated by the MASTERDISK stamp on their run-off groove area (along with Ludwig's etched initials RL on the former vinyl pressing), which is not the case for other major releases like the U.K. pressings.