We all know he is famous/infamous for his live performances so boots become a treasure trove.
All are downloadable off the net ( whither the business model of the humble bootlegger)
Here’s a few of my favourites.
On DVD Van Morrrison For Rainbow. the London show of the 2 shows that that comprised the seminal Too Late To Stop Now album. Great sound, great vision quality and right up close.
Audio
If You Don’t Like It You Can Go Fuck Yourself. Montreux,1974. 4 piece band including Dallas Taylor and Pete Winfield. Title reprising a remark Van made to a fan who complained how long he took to come back for an encore.
Can You Feel The Silence. Essen,Germany 1982- Celtic Soul/Common One period -fantastic sound.
Rave On. Glastonbury 1987. SoundboardMoreCeltic Soul. 7 minutes of Healing , 9 mins of Summertime and another 9 of John Donne.
Rave on
There are hundreds!!!
But a shout out (again) for Catalog Strays, the definitive three-disc set of studio rareties.
Live: Mojo At The Roxy ’78 / Capitol Theatre, Passaic, NJ ’79 / “Live On Air” (12 songs, Warm Love through to Wild Night) / Fillmore West ’70 … etc. etc.
Well the fact that there are hundreds is sort of the point.
Which are the best and maybe even a link to how to get it.
I’m a Van fan and an occasional boot downloader. However, I have probably downloaded and subsequently abandoned more Van boots than anyone else’s, as so many of them have such chronic audio quality. Add to that the fact that 90% of them only seem to be shared as MP3s (which I won’t grace with bandwidth) and the net result is a very short list of decent Van boots that are worth the hard disc space. Good job the fella’s done so many brilliant proper albums. So any links/bootnames that are findable in a lossless format would be gladly received.
The 1987 Glastonbury set has been one of my fave Van recordings (live, studio, legit or other) for many years. Firstly a cassette taped from Radio 1 in concert & then an upgraded. Cd version.
Btw: the Cyprus Avenue concert from this week is already up at Bigozine
Down by Avalon (Montreux 1990) is a great 1 CD soundboard of a fantastic show. The version of Sweet Thing is amazing, but it’s a great performance throughout.
All the ones I cited are lossless in the form I own Foxy .
Rootin’ about in the, er, usual places, reveals that a problem persists that is somewhat similar to that remarked upon in the thread about the UK Sperm Bank – there is a chronic lack of seeders. Not sure about extending the metaphor any further, but these things do always come round again; so it’s just a matter of time.
Err – *coughs* – I am told that EzTorrent/dimeadozen.org have buckets of well-seeded lossless shows…