Dickey Betts Official Bootleg Volume 1

2009 five CD live set from the veteran British band. Manfred Mann's Earth Band has toured consistently since their inception in the early '70s. No wonder then, that there are countless bootleg recordings doing the rounds. The band is renowned for shaping their songs on a gig-by-gig basis and this collection shows how the sets have been molded and developed over the years. The CDs contain recordings from various European venues, dating from 1981 to 2007. Apart from Volume One, they are all taken from single concerts. For timing purposes, some sets have been edited, but no other enhancements, re-records or overdubs have been added. The performances on this set were recorded in Europe 1981, Austria 1986, Germany 1991, Norway 1999, and Germany 2007.

This DVD project came together when during a break in the touring of the "Marathon World Tour". The Band started to review the untold hours of video and thousands of photos from the tour. None of the video or photos had been shot with the intention of a DVD in mind but after reviewing all of this, the possibility was raised and the editing began…

With demos like these, 'Falling Into Infinity' had the potential to be the greatest Dream Theater album. Sadly, the castrated label-influenced final version simply does not share the glory of it's demos. Dream Theater had been sitting on the fence waiting to record this album for three years, and in this time, they had developed enough songs to fill up two discs! However, the label rejected the idea of releasing a double disc album, and the group had to pick and choose which songs to put on the record. With this official bootleg release, fans could at long last hear the songs as they were meant to be heard. This is without a doubt the best of these releases, because of all the alternate and unreleased songs…

When King Crimson regrouped in late 1994 (after being apart for more than ten years), they were not planning on taping one of their first shows together for release as a live album later on. But after completing a successful tour of Argentina, the band discovered that a poorly recorded bootleg had surfaced, and it was costing fans a pretty healthy sum. So like many other bands before them, King Crimson decided to beat the bootleggers and release an official live album themselves. The resulting two-CD set is worthy of any serious Crimson fan's time, due to an excellent song selection, inspired playing, and crystal clear sound (taken directly from a DAT soundboard tape). The classic '80s lineup, which appears on B'Boom, is that of Robert Fripp, Adrian Belew, Bill Bruford, and Tony Levin, joined by new members Pat Mastelotto (drums) and Trey Gunn (stick)…

With limited facilities Antony Kalugin has recreated a real live band sound of his festival appearance at Crescendo France in August 2012. The bootleg is shot in 16:9 format and comes with a first class sound quality recording provided by the Festival team of Manu Mure, Matthieu Calmels and Arnaud Houpert. And you can experience the whole occasion via the DVD. Just to get to Crecendo the band travelled from deepest Ukraine in two cars sleeping in them overnight on the three day journey. The DVD really is a throw back to how music DVDs used to be made before they got overcooked and presented as a perfect form of art, taking away that excitement and edginess of artists live performance…

Bob has teamed up with Ten frontman, and longstanding Magnum fan, Gary Hughes who has written all the songs on "The Tower" (as well as producing and playing bass and keyboards). "The Tower" was written with classic Magnum very much in mind and harks back to "On A Storyteller's Night" style pomp meeting "Wings Of Heaven" style AOR with a very 90s melodic rock production bringing the old sound bang up to date.

Dream Theater’s entire performance of the legendary Pink Floyd album recorded live at the Hammersmith Apollo in London; England on October 25th 2005.

By the release of 1984's Oblivion, Utopia was inching its way toward a sound that was very popular with the mainstream pop bands of the time – glossy production and electronic drums (a sound popularized by the likes of the Cars and Def Leppard). While the aforementioned groups benefited from this musical approach, Utopia did not – especially due to the fact that drummer Willie Wilcox helped propel many of the group's tracks before this "electronic makeover." It turns out that on the album's supporting tour, Wilcox merged both traditional drums with electronic ones (which improved many of the cold-sounding Oblivion tracks), as evidenced from Vol. 9 of the ongoing Todd Rundgren/Utopia Official Bootleg series, Oblivion Tour. Although its days as a band were drawing rapidly to a close (Utopia would only issue one more album, 1985's POV), the group sounds in fine form here, as such new tracks as "Cry Baby," "Itch in My Brain," and "Love With a Thinker" turn out to be highlights, as well as such older nuggets as "You Make Me Crazy," "Caravan," and "Last of the New Wave Riders".