Continuing a thread on BWW I wondered if there's someone on this forum who has a background on mid to late 70s bootlegs such as Bowie 74 7" or the Wish Upon A Star LP. Like with most of the 1978 Austrian tour bootlegs, these recordings have never surfaced in their entirety*, which seems odd.

Any anecdotes on these tapes and the people that produced these bootlegs is welcome!

* I think Sister Midnight from the LA 1976 show surfaced as well but nothing more.

I've also wondered that myself - as I said in the BWW thread it seems these originate from professional bootleggers who are not fans perse.
The same goes for a lot of outtakes that were released on bootleg 7" - in many cases the 7" is still the only source and no lower generation recordings have surfaced...

For more info about the Wizardo label (Wish Upon A Star lp and Bowie '74 Live single bootlegs):

http://floydboots.com/pages/labels.html

The complete recording of the L.A. Feb. 9th 1976 concert would indeed be a killer release.

I'm assuming you mean "Australian", not Austrian.

Take the following with a grain of salt for some of the facts.

In the mid 1970's there was a small (5m x 5m) shop in the Cathedral Arcade in Melbourne called Pipe Imported Records. The ceiling was much higher, with the walls above about 2m painted black. In addition to speakers there was a pair of boxes that lit up in time with the music - bass, midrange and treble in each. The guy behind the counter, Daniel was European, possibly German and they stocked a very small range of music - racks of German music like Can, Kraftwerk etc, Glam Rock ( bowie, roxy, nico (!), VU etc, some prog rock and many bootlegs. Bootlegs sold for $AUD 5, whilst normal LP's sold for about $7.

Whilst you couldn't listen to the bootlegs - they were all sealed, there were about 3 turntables that were there, two for listening, one for the shop, and they were often all on the go at the one time.

After buying the Dollars in Drag lp I took it back - it was faulty, and it was replaced with another, which was faulty in exactly the same place. Daniel organised for me to go to an address in St Kilda Road, Melbourne's main boulevard, and that where I met Charlie.

Arriving at the office I was greeted with horrified looks - this was the "warehouse" for all the bootlegs, and there was rack upon rack of them there - why would Daniel tell someone the address. Soon they realised I was not a threat, only a teenager keen to get a copy or Dollars in Drag that didn't sound like it had a scratch on Man in the Middle. ( it was here that I swapped my Pig's Eye pressing for a TAKRL pressing - the Pigs eye pressing having a fault.)

A few years later Daniel told me that Charlie was responsible for the Australian 78 recordings and subsequent records. According to Daniel, (and who knows how much was poetic licence), some of it was done with either radio mikes to an outside van, or some other set up so as get a broad sound picture.

Apparently Charlie's long since departed to "rock'n'roll heaven", and I guess with him, the tapes of those '78 concerts.

postscript:

Five years later, for the 83 tour it was someone else, from another state who I met the day before the first Australian concert in 78, who became the bootleg king, running quite an operation for several years, who kindly gave me first offer on all Bowie bootlegs as they arrived in Australia. Through him I exchanged some so-so tapes of the Australian 83 tour, and a great equalised tape of the final melbourne 87 concert.

i'm gonna get my stuff transferred and shared.
can you tell me if the following sources are circulating from non bootleg sources:

Moonlight Exhibition :Birmingham 83 (this is NOT same same source as the serious moonlight/stick mcgee 3lp) this source is missing Rebel Rebel and has tape bleed through from an unknown 83 show but IMO its still better than the ear shredding source used on the Japanese 3LP

Live in tampa 1& 2 2/7/74, when i downloaded a non boot tape of this off dime it didn't seem to have the energy and loud guitar of the boot
but that was a long time ago and memory is fallible- especially mine
should be easy to compare tapes since the boot source has that woman saying "its my husband" over either Rebel Rebel or Suffragette City

mmmm phased Guitar heaven!



Serious Moonlight (Milton Keynes 83)
i assume the 2 tokyo tracks are redundant since the tokyo cdr came out?
hilarious banter on this one during the Jean Genie

Pinpoints of Light (12/6/83 Gothenburg)
sound not as good as the previous night which is one of my fave boots ever but it has Red Sails & TVC15
the 2LP version is a bad copy of the 3lp and should be avoided.

Beacause of the quality of the recording and the fact that half the show never circulated, having read about Mike "The Mike" Millard, I presume he recorded the Wish Upon A Star concert.

from Wikipedia:
Mike Millard, nicknamed "Mike The Mike" was an avid concert taper in the 1970s and 1980s, recording mostly Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and The Rolling Stones concerts in California, especially at the Los Angeles Forum.[1] He taped virtually every show at the Forum from 1974 to 1980. Many of his recordings found their way into the hands of bootleggers who sold Millard's work to fans.

Starting with a basic mono recorder in 1974, Millard upgraded to a Nakamichi stereo recorder with AKG Acoustics microphones for the 1975 Led Zeppelin shows in the area. He often used a wheelchair to conceal his equipment, pretending to be disabled.[2] Unlike most 1970s audience bootlegs, Millard's recordings are noted for their great sound quality, and are to this day considered some of the finest audio bootlegs available.

Millard's recording of the Led Zeppelin concert on June 21, 1977 at the Forum (allegedly taped from row number six) was released under the title Listen To This Eddie, and remains one of the best-known Led Zeppelin bootlegs. His recording of the opening number from the concert, "The Song Remains The Same", was included in the promos menu of the Led Zeppelin DVD. Millard recorded all of the Rolling Stones 1975 shows at the LA Forum, and his recording of the Sunday, June 13, 1975 show (titled 'LA Friday') has become one of the most widely spread recordings of a Rolling Stones concert.

Millard was never behind the sale of bootlegs and was openly against the illegal sale of his recordings - like many audience tapers today. He was notorious for "marking" copies of his tapes so that if one of his recordings turned up for sale on LP or CD, he would be able to tell which person he had traded it to. He kept a very detailed logbook of his marked recordings and who they were distributed to. "Unmarked" copies of Mike's recordings are very scarce. Recently, several unmarked 1st generation copies of his Led Zeppelin recordings surfaced in trading circles, a truly historic moment for collectors around the world.

Millard allegedly suffered from severe depression, and committed suicide in 1990

heres a hurriedly transferred clip of the double LP version of birmingham '83.
it'll never win any prizes for fidelity but wow! what a powerful recording, amazing drum & guitar sound.

i prefer this to the tinny Japanese 3LP version which has no bass and is therefore unlistenable IMO

is this source circulating in trading circles?
http://www.4shared.com/mp3/fGhuWD_3/Cra ... Test.html#


if not i could transfer it to wav but my connection is too slow to share it uncompressed even if i could find a large enough hosting site

ps: its not all overdriven like this clip, only STS, Cracked actor, ashes to ashes, space oddity and half of stay are overdriven,
i just posted this bit because it sounds so wild, i love it!

it could almost be sleaze rock like Lubricated Goat, The Shockheaded peters or Foetus etc.