Jethro Tull, The Scope, Norfolk, Virginia, 22 April 1972 (including Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band's opening set) This is one of the most popular recordings from the "Thick as a Brick" tour and deservedly so: it's a blistering and highly energic performance captured on a great sounding audience tape. In fact, this concert came in circulation on a vinyl bootleg called "Ticketron", a short while after the show. That bootleg was issued by the legendary American bootleg label Trademark Of Quality. For those of you who do not know anything about TMOQ, it was a very famous one throughout the late 60s and 70s. The owners of the label did tape most of the shows themselves using the best equipment available and the releases were noteworthy because of their high sound quality, something that, more than often, pissed off the artists that were being bootlegged. Back to the Jethro Tull vinyl: "Ticketron" was first isssued with an edited version of part one of "Thick as a Brick" on side A and the "Wind-Up" encore section on side B. After a while, a second version of the LP with the same side A but with "Cross-Eyed Mary", "A New Day Yesterday" and "Aqualung" on side B was pressed, liberating 25 minutes more from the show. Over the years, the "Ticketron" material was pressed on several other LP and CD bootlegs, most of them using the first sequence. Unfortunately, the original masters have probably been junked, so anything that wasn't pressed on these bootlegs is probably lost forever (so, the bits from part one of "Thick as a Brick" that were cut out, the whole part two and John Evans' piano intro to "Wind-Up"). One of the CD reissues of the original bootleg is tantalizingly called "Ticketron Masters", but it actually comes from a vinyl source and doesn't include the "Cross-Eyed Mary" section. What I did was taking two very clean rips of the original bootlegs that were seeded here some years ago by Rednoise and Wawawa, place the material in the correct sequence, reduce the signal to true mono since it was not a stereo recording anyway, thus eliminating some channel issues, manually removed a couple of clicks here and there and properly retracked everything. No eq or noise reduction was applied to the original material and the speed seemed mostly correct, although there is some very slight warble in bits of "Thick as a Brick" that can't be corrected. I think the ending result is pretty good and, although there are other very fine audience recordings from the 1972-1973 TAAB tours (Wolverhampton, Tokyo, Berlin, Bologna, Stoke-On-Trent), this is my favorite, sound-wise. There are a couple of seed request from this tour that I'd like to make. One is Baltimore (12th November 1972), another recording that, if I'm not mistaken, only survives sourced from vinyl boots. Another one is Adelaide (8th July 1972): one day I saw a CD bootleg of this, that I refused to buy because it was extremely expensive (and I don't like to buy bootlegs), but I never saw the show itself on any trading list and its setlist is not reported on the excellent Ministry of Information website. I'd like to hear these two so, if you have one or both, please feel free to seed them! A good summary of what happened during the TAAB shows can be read here: http://www.tullpress.com/brick.htm 01 Introduction 02 Thick as a Brick, Pt. 1 [cut during organ solo] 03 Jeffrey speaks 04 Cross-Eyed Mary 05 A New Day Yesterday 06 Aqualung 07 Ian speaks 08 Wind-Up [cuts in, piano intro edited out] 09 Instrumental by Martin Barre 10 Locomotive Breath 11 Hard Headed English General 12 Wind-Up (reprise) Ian Anderson: lead vocals, flute, acoustic guitar Martin Barre: electric guitar John Evans: piano, organ Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond: bass guitar, spoken words Barriemore Barlow: drums, percussion Recorded by: unknown, possibly the Trade Mark of Quality of guys Vinyl rips and original seeds by: Rednoise (1-2, 7-12) and Wawawa (3-6) Furtherly reworked by: JacoZappa Lineage (tracks 1-2, 7-12): Aud > "Ticketron" bootleg LP > Wav (declick, speed correction) > flac files seeded by Rednoise in September 2006 > wav (edits, volume adjustments, true mono)> Flac Lineage (tracks 3-6): AUD > ? bootleg LP > wav > CD > EAC (secure) > wav > pitch correction > FLAC level 8 > flac files seeded by Wawawa in September 2006 > wav (edits, volume adjustments, true mono) -> Flac As a bonus I've also included Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band's opening set, since this is the only date of this tour from which we have both the Captain and Tull's set. Sound quality, unfortunately, is much worse; it was not taped by the same persons. It's still decent, although the first 30-40 seconds of the first track are very distorted: after that it settles a bit. It was reported that the Captain was booed off the stage, but the audience on the tape seems ok with what he's doing, although not terribly responsive. Although Jethro Tull were Captain Beefheart fans, it was probably not the greatest of the pairings. To think that these days we would love to be able to see such a show!! Reportedly, Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond got on very well with Don Van Vliet. This recording was first seeded by Jazzfan here on dimeadozen a few years ago. My version comes from his files, but has been cleaned (reduced to true mono, except for a part at the beginning, no eq or noise reduction) and speed corrected. 01 Hobo Chang Ba [cuts in] 02 I'm Gonna Booglarize You Baby 03 Black Snake Moan 04 Peon 05 Abba Zaba 06 Alice in Blunderland 07 Golden Birdies Recorded by: unknown Tape rip by: Jazzfan Edited and speed corrected by: JacoZappa Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart): vocals, harmonica Bill Harkleroad (Zoot Horn Rollo): guitar, slide guitar Mark Boston (Rockette Morton): guitar, bass guitar on "Golden Birdies" Roy Estrada (Orejón): bass guitar Arthur Dyer Tripp III (Ed Marimba): drums, percussion Lineage: AUD > Tape (unknown gen) > Wavelab > WAV > Trader's Little Helper >FLAC (level 8) > wav (speed corrected, true mono, edited, retracked) > flac Share and enjoy! Keep this info file, if you are sharing this elsewhere. Support the artist(s)! Do not sell this. It's a cretin thing to do. Resist your urges and don't make any artwork, please.