CD version of the great 70's bootleg Arrow
recorded live at My Father's Place 3/20/78 (maybe)
I moved to New York in the spring of 1977, on the strength of one Television set at CBGB. At that point, they were playing out every few weeks and I thought an opportunity like that was worth relocation from Ohio. But by the time I got back to Manhattan, Richard Lloyd was in rehab and almost a year passed before I got the chance for a recharge. When show day finally came I hid my Nakamichi 550 in the bottom of a crumpled bag of thrift store shirts and set out for Long Island, where the expected fireworks ensued. A couple of years later a friend with a mail order record business (another big Television fan) suggested a bootleg of the big night. Most of them went to an exporter he worked with, but I would visit Bleecker Bob in the West Village a couple of times a week to sell to this notorious cheapskate, a pitiful few copies at a time. Although it was a steady seller in his shop, he refused to tie up his working capital. He always complained about the cover, too. After a couple of years, Neil Cooper of ROIR made a play for the cassette masters, advising my partner in crime that he intended to reissue with or without our cooperation. We eventually gave in, surprising Verlaine with a modest royalty payment the next time he came around to unload dispensables from his record collection - like the L'Intrepide Bavon Marie Marie LP I took home. Whenever our little project is mentioned, there's always a disclaimer that the original vinyl boot sounds better than the Blow Up reissue. There's a reason. Disc mastering was done afterhours at Precision Lacquer in Los Angeles, like maybe when Lindsey Buckingham had finally run out of coke and gone home for the day. The metal stampers came from Europadisk in Manhattan, the first high-end facility of its kind in the US. Then I rejected test pressings from three area plants before I found one in New Jersey that could handle grooves narrowed by the twenty-five minutes per side running time. It was only as I was preparing this post that I discovered that The Blow Up omits Poor Circulation, Arrow's rarest gem.