KATE BUSH - ON THE STAGE TONIGHT VINYL LIVE BOOTLEG

	€		40
	$		47

KATE BUSH - ON THE STAGE TONIGHT

BOOTLEG

1979 HAMMERSMITH ODEON CONCERT OF SAT MAY 13th

ULTRA RARE

12INCH VINYL

VINYL: MINT UNPLAYED

COVER: M- (because of tiny edge damage right corner below, see photo)

JUST A SMALL AMOUNT OF COPIES MADE

MADE IN ENGLAND

GOOD QUALITY VINYL

album will be sent in solid package, prices named are for signed for postal service

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The forum on katebushnews shows next discussion about this item:

I've always wanted Live At Hammersmith Odeon on vinyl to complete my KT vinyl collection. Obviously, I would love the entire concert but in lieu of that ever happening, KTs selected highlights will do. There have been numerous vinyl bootlegs over the years - all of apparently limited sound quality. In 1994 Kate finally released a box set with a CD of the Hammersmith Odeon soundtrack. Long out of print and fairly hard to come by, it remains the definitive audio experience of Live At Hammersmith Odeon, though Immortal Records released an unofficial version of both the CD as well as a DVD created from the VHS tape in 2012. 

Perhaps excited by the prospect of Kate performing live again in 2014, some industrious individual nicknamed "The Doctor" decided to have a go at creating a new vinyl pressing of Live At Hammersmith Odeon entitled On The Stage Tonight… Curious, I decided to order one to see how it sounds. Here's my twopence worth:

Audio

This appears to be a CD-to-vinyl transfer of Live At Hammersmith Odeon. If this is indeed correct, I believe it would be the first as the earlier bootlegs 'Wow', 'Moving', etc. were created from audio transfers of the VHS tape. The sound, and pressing, of this new bootleg is clean - but the dynamics are somewhat subdued. Part of that is due to the fact that the audio is from a CD source (if I am correct about this) and not professionally transferred or mastered, and part of that, I believe, is due to the length. Each side is around 26 minutes which pushes the limit of what vinyl can handle in regard to audio fidelity. I feel the official vinyl release of The Whole Story suffers because of this. The Simply Vinyl (2000) version of TWS is better, but it's still not a great sounding KT record to my ears considering the originals. If you want to hear how amazing a recording from this tour can sound on vinyl I would suggest the Japanese pressing of On Stage. It's amazing! A truly sublime listening experience.

I think the only way the audio could have been improved upon in this CD-to-vinyl private pressing scenario is perhaps to create a double album of it, giving each side enough room to at least utilize the CD quality to optimum effect - and maybe even add L'Amour Looks Something Like You from the This Woman's Work bonus CD for the sake of completion (as it is the only other officially released live song on CD from this tour that doesn't appear on the original Hammersmith Odeon CD).

Pressing

The pressing is rather good. Clean, no hiss, very few pops. It's actually better than the official Fish People pressing of Director's Cut and worlds better than the Anti- abomination US pressing of 50 Words For Snow (the Fish People UK pressing of that is fantastic though). The record has some weight to it, but is not 180-gram. Not sure that would matter here though.

Import? 

It's listed as an import but I believe this is a UK bootleg pressing. To date, 3 copies have been sold on eBay and this one I bought from a record store in Preston, UK. All the copies I've seen so far seem to emanate from Lancashire county in the UK, so I personally believe it was created in this region. I could be wrong about that though. And being that this is a "private pressing", I have no idea how many copies were made. There could be like…10.

Packaging

Not bad! The cover image of Kate performing James And The Cold Gun may have been lifted from a higher def jpeg found on the internet (Rolling Stone may be the source of this particular jpeg?) The cover fonts are trying, a little too hard perhaps, to imitate the On Stage EP design. However, they are not the same fonts and thus seem a little contrived to me. But again, not at all bad for a bootleg. However, I like the Andale Mono/Courier font (or whatever it is) on the reverse. Simple, but it works just fine. The sleeve is nicely printed, the paper and weight is a decent quality, and it even has the title printed on the spine. The inner is just a plain, white sleeve. The record labels are minimal to say the least. There are no matrix numbers, just the vinyl inscriptions on each side as listed above.

Is it worth getting? 

I certainly don't mind owning this bootleg on vinyl but the audio is definitely inferior to the official CD release. If you're looking for the best audio, try to track down the official CD version of that. It won't be cheap though… That being said, I've always wanted Live At Hammersmith Odeon on vinyl and now I have a copy - and until KT releases an official version (which could be never), this will suffice. I don't have the other Hammersmith vinyl bootlegs to compare to but I would wager this sounds better than any of those.