Empire Pool

[John Majka]

Actually, despite all the constant negative criticism, I'd say that Bring Me 
the Head of Yuri Gagarin is one of the best HW bootlegs out there that has 
seen semi-official release.  The sound quality is nowhere near as bad as 
most of the reports would seem to say.  People who are shocked at the sound 
quality have obviously never collected or listened to many bootleg 
recordings.  I have at least several dozens shows that sound much worse.  On 
the other hand, some of the best bootleg recordings have never been pressed 
for sale.  By their nature, bootlegs will be sub-par recordings since more 
often than not they are sourced by a guy with a jambox in the audience... 
what can you expect?  This is not to say that all audience recordings are 
bad, at all.  If not for many of these illicit recordings, there would be no 
recordings at all.

John Majka


> Also, on a comletely different subject; I just got Empire Pool '73, my 
> first experience of Hawkwind 'bootleg'/Audience recorded quality stuff, 
> and thank god its taken 'til now. No wonder people get angry over Bring me 
> the head... if Empire Pool is a superior cleaned up sound source Yuri must 
> be utter sh*te. I'm not complaing about Empire, I knew what I was getting, 
> but its made my mind up to not bother with the bootleg CDRs of reading 75 
> and so on that turn up on e-bay regularly (which go to £30, for a home 
> produced