Collectors Music Reviews

I love the vintage (70′s) Neil, but who cares about CDR’s?

To me (am I the minority?) CDR’s are (in general) the same as digital downloads which (for bootlegs at least) i will not pay. To me, that’s crazy…
Not to say I don’t have ANY cdr titles in my collection, but the number is very small and I don’t enjoy the hobby on that level.
So I agree classicrawker, there are some killer titles on CDr. But I generally refuse to BUY them in that format.
I thought this was a silver cd review site anyways? Why the CDR promo?

I don’t like buying them either RG and like you I only have a few titles which I got because I really wanted the shows and they did not exist on silver disc or I got them dirt cheap but the list of labels putting out silver titles is slowly shrinking. Pretty soon there will only be a handful of labels still making silver discs of big selling artists like Led Zep, Clapton, Stones, Floyd, Springsteen, etc…and a few speciality labels like Darker than Blue… Godfather, is one of the few labels who strays from this elite group of artists these days. I will keep buying as long as good silver titles are released but I fear they may go the way of casettes…

Yeah jbrum… That might be my #1 complaint, the prices are just insane for CDR’s. Bleck!

Wow! Speak of the devil! Keep in mind I hardly ever purchase “pro-cdr” releases, but I recently made an exception.
There’s been a Springsteen perfromance that was never issued on silver (July 9, 1995 Berlin Germany); so I finally broke down and purchased the Orange Records cdr release from 2002. The primary reasons I made the purchase was because, again, the show was never issued on silver and I only paid $9 for it.
Well, I paid $9 too much! I finally popped it in to my cd player and the first & second song were filled with digital noise behind the music. Halfway thru the second song, the music just stopped! The “data” on the cdr had detiorated. I’ve finally learned my lesson -the hard way.

It’s indeed generally very true that CD-R’s are a disturbingly bad trend not worth collecting that I personally try to avoid as much as reasonably possible, but it’s not always 100% true all the time for 100% of collectors. The descriptive info. on this site about itself says that CD-R titles may be featured occasionally if they’re important enough, and some of the CD-R reviews here were written & submitted even before it was said or made clear here that factory-pressed silver originals are supposed to be the focus, mostly. If only tmoq could have had a chance to find & buy his Springsteen CD-R years ago – before it started to degrade & become corrupt….. And if he had done so, he could have backed it up to the very best quality brand of blank CD-R that’s produced, which is probably still Taiyo Yuden these days, & at least was a few years ago. Before that, Taiyo Yuden was prob. the 2nd-best brand behind Mitsui. Very unfortunately, many, or even most, of the audio-only titles of Roger Waters, David Gilmour, & possibly even Syd Barrett that are available were produced & released as only pro-CD-R’s. Some of them are superbly outstanding recordings, & it’s such a shame that they haven’t ever been made available on original factory-pressed original silver.

tmoq, just email Orange Records and ask to get some replacements discs or perhaps a refund (due to faulty product). Yeah… that’ll work…

Anytime you get a CDR title you should back them up on good quality Japanese made media. I use Mitsui Gold CDR’s which are expensive, relatively speaking, but worth every penny..TY’s are also good stuff at a more reasonable price…I do the same with my silvers I make copies to play and archive the originals…..Same with pro made DVD-R’s I back them up on Mitsui or TY media…

I’m not completely sure, but I don’t think Mitsui has always been made in Japan, and may no longer be these days. For the 1st few years I started buying & using blanks, I used only Mitsui exclusively, from approx. 2000 to approx. 2003, when they started to become unplayable in one of my CD players, and so then, after hearing that Mitsui had switched manufacturers to one that was possibly much worse, I switched to Taiyo Yuden, and since then I’ve never had any problem at all that could be attributed to or blamed on the brand.

If you read the descriptive info. on this site about itself on its main/home page, you could see that it actually says the following -

“The focus is upon silver pressed releases, both official and unofficial. With the proliferation of CDR titles you will occasionally find a review posted if it is important enough.”

As for that Springsteen CD-R title that tmoq bought recently, if only the place that sold it to him could have sold it at a much more reasonable price way back years ago when it first became available…..

Never?! If you say that, then you obviously must not be a (regular) customer of a certain source that’s prob. the most popular one among the members of this site here – they often charge just $10 per disc for pro-CD-R releases, which is even less than half of their regular price per disc on factory-pressed original silver releases. Unfortunately, I’m not able to tell you what this particular source is for a reason that should be obvious to virtually all boot collectors. They’re not the only source that sells pro-CD-R’s at lower prices.

That’s true only most of the time – but not ALL the time. I can remember at least a couple Pink Floyd pro-CD-R titles a few years ago that sold for just $10 per disc that were NOT free/bonus/gift items at Lighthouse. And there have been a few other pro-CD-R titles that, although they didn’t sell for as low as $10 per disc, they were priced slightly lower than factory-pressed silver originals. And again, there are other sources that sell pro-CD-R titles at prices less than those of factory-pressed silver originals. However, I realize that it’s certainly true that most of the time, most sources sell pro-CD-R titles at full regular prices, very unfortunately. My point was mostly about the usage of the word “NEVER”, which means virtually 0.0%.

Hi DLee… so I guess I’m prone to hyperbole in the use of the word “never”. The point still remains… prices for pro-CDR titles are set at this point, and in all likelihood will not come down (another reason not to collect them).

Also, these “gift” titles are not FREE from Lighthouse (as we all know, very little in life is actually “free”). They are added as bonus when you PURCHASE silver pressed product. Gotta pay for something to get something. The comment that some vendors charge EXTRA for these bonus items is further proof that even FREE product has a cost.

To me, the fact that CDRs (that will eventually deteriorate) are given as gift items shows that they are cheap and easy to produce and simply shouldn’t be priced at premium levels. Don’t buy into the madness!

I agree with you, jerrythebarman, that it is kinda cool to get a bonus CDR (usually limited to the first 50 or 100 sold) with a silver purchase. But when you get charged for this FREE bonus… not as cool. And when the same medium is routinely sold for $20-$30 per disc… very uncool.