Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Henry Cow & Faust-Live In London Rainbow Theatre 1973,Bootleg CD-R,1973,UK




Here's a bootleg recording of Henry Cow/Faust live ,organised by Virgin records in 1973 at Rainbow Theatre ,London(as a series of live performances),for promotional reasons.To promote its new signing, Virgin organised a UK tour of Henry Cow and Faust, who were also signed to the label at the time, in September and October 1973. At that point, Faust featured guitarist Peter Blegvad (also of Slapp Happy) and bassist Ulli Trepte, although the original members they were replacing soon came back to the fold. Some of the gigs included collective jamming between Faust and Geoff Leigh, and sometimes all members of both bands. At the end of the tour (which culminated in a memorable performance at London's Rainbow Theatre)...The sound quality is just a step above bad ,but i think it's a very important recording to be included in blog's posts for archival reasons.I've done all possible improvements ,well,according to my knowlege in sound editing,to sound quality but the result is not satisfactory enough.Possibly someone else can do something more.
get it here

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm surprised no one has posted a thank you yet.

I have a feeling this recording is pretty primative, but I'll try and do a little remastering. If the results are OK you'll see it on everyone's favorite live recording site, if that's alright with you.

mutantsounds said...

no problem unless you give it to this site first:)

Anonymous said...

In case you might want a set list:

1. Nirvana for Mice 4.13
2. Ruins Introduction / Teenbeat / Bee / Free 8.43
3. Free / Amydala 10.53
4. Teenbeat Reprise / Guilder Tells of Silent Airborne Machine 7.59
5. Guilder (contnued - free section) / Ruins again 11.53
6. Themes (including Guilder) 3.10

I can't be 100% positive about this since I browsed my way through it pretty fast. The Ruins themes were pretty interesting since Leigh was still in the group. Also, playing both Teenbeat and Guilder almost Cow sound like a real rock and roll group! Anyway, this was my first try at a set list --maybe I'll hear more when trying to remaster this.

Milton Parker said...

though this is billed as Faust / Henry Cow and they both played sets that night, this sounds like it's just the Henry Cow set with the lineup described below (i.e. I suspect Peron's the only Faust member playing here, amid a massively expanded London hometown lineup of Cow). They're playing things off the first album like 'Nirvana for Mice' and 'Teenbeat', an early version of 'Kew. Rhone', some compositions I don't recognize from albums & tons of improv. A really good HC show, especially given the unreleased pieces.

I was sort of hoping to hear trainwreck Faust in full 1973 glory though -- that's not what this is, though hopefully that's out there somewhere as well

Anonymous said...

My impression is that this recording is mislabelled, and is a Henry Cow recording from 1973, but not from the tour with Faust. The Rainbow Theatre show had a greatly expanded lineup, no evidence of which can be heard on the recording in question. It's probably either Hemel Hempstead or the Explorer's Club, as those are the two '73 Cow tapes I'm aware of. (I would further posit that it was _intentionally_ mislabelled by whoever put it on SS, given that live tapes of Faust from their heyday are one of the holy grails of tape collectors and thus subject to hoaxing.)

Out of curiosity, pgeorge, what is "everyone's favorite live recording site"? My favorite live recording site doesn't take anything sourced from MP3s. Is there another one I should be aware of? (Incidentally, that recording site just put up a Henry Cow soundboard from fall of '74, where their entire set was improvisations based around an embryonic version of Living in the Heart of the Beast. If you don't have it, get it!)

Anonymous said...

You're right, that site does not accept MP3 sourced material -- their loss. Also, interesting how every listenable file there is called "A++". Oh well, marketing.

"Bee" is what eventually became "Kew Rhone", by the way.

Anonymous said...

Excellent !! Thanks ..

I realise I am asking a question that may not get answered .. but ... the lossless bootleg site you are referring to ..

Is there a cryptic way I could find my way there ..?

and .. apologies for all the questions .. does anybody know of any Back Door boots?

Anonymous said...

I was at the Rainbow gig and vividly remember Henry Cow's troupe of dancers and strangely costumed people wandering in the aisles. There was a man on stage with an ironing board who ironed clothes throughout the Henry Cow set. Faust by contrast were almost invisible in the dark with just one light over the drummer. the only visual feature was when a lump of concrete was brought onto the stage and a man with a jackhammer broke it to pieces. It was a great night and I'm not sure I want to spoil the memory by actually listening to the music

Anonymous said...

Robert: Well, I'm not really skilled at being cryptic, so I'll just come out and say that it's a bittorrent site and it's at www.dimeadozen.org. They cap membership at 100,000 users, but they're purging accounts all the time, so if you keep trying you'll eventually get in. And it's absolutely worth it.

There is at least one Back Door boot of two BBC broadcasts they did, one from '73 and one from '75. I got it off Usenet in MP3 in '00. I know there's been an official BBC release on Hux since then, but I'm pretty sure these are different sessions. Now, that said, actually _finding_ it will probably be a herculean task, but hey, at least you know it exists.

Regarding MP3 versus lossless, personally I'm not some golden-ears who claims to be able to hear the difference between 320 LAME MP3 and FLAC, but what the hey, that's the standard a lot of people go by, and given how cheap storage space and bandwidth are these days I can't say I really object to it if they want to post stuff in that format.

Anonymous said...

Found this post looking for Faust (pity it wasn't, but check here for loads of Faust goodies:

http://knowyourconjurer.blogspot.com/2010/12/faust-mega-post-by-dave-sez-go-get-you.html)

On Back Door, ask and (three years later) you shall receive. Both Back Door bootlegs are here:

http://elasticrock.blogspot.com/search/label/Back%20Door

Live in London 73 is sourced from the BBC, the other is, I think, a band compilation. Neither is the same as the Hux release which is BBC studio sessions, and excellent.

Patient searching under "Back Door", "Colin Hodgkinson" and "Alexis Korner" (who played in a duet with Colin) will turn up a wealth of my posts here:

nukebass.blogspot.com.

Thanks so much for the Gong 69 and Vaultage 78.79.80! Cheers, Dave Sez.

All of my mega-posts here:
http://knowyourconjurer.blogspot.com/search/label/Dave%20Sez

Anonymous said...

PS: As luck would have it, BBC Radio 6 (digital music channel) has just broadcast this:

Back Door, Conemelt and Ivor Cutler (60 minutes)

Broadcast Sat 18 Dec 2010 04:00 BBC 6 Music.

"To ease you into the Live Hour it's a concert from the jazz trio Back Door, recorded at The Paris Theatre in 1973 ... "

Back Door — Folk Song - Paris Theatre 1973
Back Door — Roberta - Paris Theatre 1973
Back Door — Linin' Track - Paris Theatre 1973
Back Door — Forget Me Daisy - Paris Theatre 1973
Back Door — Country Blues No 1 - Paris Theatre 1973
Back Door — His Old Boots - Paris Theatre 1973
Back Door — Walking Blues - Paris Theatre 1973

This confirms that the "Live in London 1973" is indeed BBC-sourced; now if only they'd put out the remaining (unidentified) tracks from that concert ... cheers for now, Dave Sez.