Comments on: Black Sabbath – Past Live Ever (Tarantura TCDBS-1-1, 2)

By: aleebee

aleebee — Fri, 08 May 2009 17:30:12 +0000

Hi Chambeau, no, ‘Sometimes I’m Happy’ was just a concert track, evolving from an onstage jam. Worth noting that before the official ‘Past Lives’ was released in its final form the album was going to be called ‘Live ’75′, as evidenced in the music press, and would have undoubtedly been this KBFH recording. Instead, as so often with the Sabbath archive, something interesting was replaced by something flawed, namely a copy of ‘Live At Last’ as CD1 and, as CD2, a pseudo-concert comprised of tracks from Paris 1970 and Asbury 1975. Who would not rather have had the 2CD of Asbury and a separate, official release for Paris 1970? That being so, thanks to Bondage and Tarantura for their efforts. :)

By: chambau

chambau — Fri, 08 May 2009 14:28:55 +0000

It hit my mail box early this week and I finally managed to ending up listening to the whole thing this morning. Absolutely great stuff. Tarantura did a marvelous job and the band’s performance is awesome. Super-fine addition to my collection. BTW, where “Sometimes I’m Happy” comes from? Do I need to re-visit my BS CDs?

By: Hager

Hager — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 20:53:13 +0000

This concert has a personal connection to me because it happened about 15 minutes away from my home in 1975. I was only 10 years old at the time, but distinctly recall hearing news about the show, and knowing that’s all I’d hear at the time because my parents wisely wouldn’t allow me into such an environment. Asbury Park took a nose dive around that time, too, falling from its once beautiful status as an oceanside resort for families into a crime ridden, dirty city that I avoided as a teenager. But Tarantura have helped me to learn what happened at the Convention Hall on that August night in 1975, and the quality of this recording can aptly be described as massive. “Killing Yourself to Live” and “Hole in the Sky” are absolutely superb ways to begin the listening experience, with wild versions of “Snowblind” and “Symptom of the Universe” continuing the madness. I can only imagine the insanity inside the venue, which was/is not very big. Each member of the band was in top form, and I have not been able to listen to anything else since luckily scoring a copy of this great title. I continue to raise my glass to Tarantura, which is on a white hot streak right now that I believe will continue well into the future.

By: LedMan

LedMan — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 04:31:22 +0000

A great choice by Tarantura of a classic Sabbath show. I’ve had this for years on CDR and also tried to track down a copy of the Bondage without any luck. Tarantura has done a great job with the packaging and mastering of this fine release. I love it when Ozzy asks the audience if they are high and then follows it with well so am I. Gotta love classic oz.

By: classicrawker

classicrawker — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 00:48:33 +0000

Glad I could share relayer. I had been looking for a copy of the Bondage title for a couple of years but it was long sold out. I happened on a two cd silver disc release from Europe titled “Accidental OverDose” on the Home(r) Entertainment Network,(they use a picture of Homer Simpson as their logo), a year or so ago which appears to be a direct knockoff of the Bondage title as it also includes the same muffled three instrumental tracks as a bonus which are rumoured to be jams from Tony Iommi’s pre Sabbath band Earth. It comes in a very nice quad foldout digipack with the picture of a Nurses Station at a doctors office on the cover. It may still be easy to find and the sound quality is fantastic. Also if anyone wants to hear this incredible show it is streaming complete on Wolfgangs Vault for free once you sign up……..

By: relayer67

relayer67 — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:22:41 +0000

Thank you classiccrawler for the info. I used the Black Sabbath Live website for reference and was disappointed that he was taking a break and the mountain of information he has compiled was not available for viewing. I’m glad to see someone had it. Makes you wonder what else is lurking in the KBFH vaults deemed “unusable”. For those interested Deep Purple is remastering the Feb 27 1976 show from the master tapes and it should be released sometime mid year.

By: classicrawker

classicrawker — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:04:10 +0000

Regarding the origins of this tape here is an excerpt from comments regarding this show from the now, sadly, shutdown “Black Sabbath Live Project” Website:

“King Biscuit recorded Black Sabbath at Asbury Park Convention Hall right on the boardwalk in Asbury Park, NJ on August 5th, 1975. The band were only a few weeks into their U.S. tour to support SABOTAGE, which wasn’t released until about 2 weeks later.

5 tracks from this show have been circulating for years in good to very good quality at best. These are sourced from various radio broadcasts (King Biscuit Flower Hour, Supergroups In Concert), both from radio broadcast vinyl and fan recordings from the broadcasts themselves. While these songs sounded fairly decent, they don’t hold a candle to lower generation versions that appeared in trading circles just recently.

The complete version of this show surfaced sometime in 2001. The word on the street back then was that a “complete, unmixed soundboard” that was leaked out of the King Biscuit vaults. In fact, this is probably actually from the original multi-track recordings, so the term “soundboard” really isn’t accurate. These tapes were re-mixed and edited for the FM broadcasts, but only 5 songs aired.

Here’s the true story behind how the Asbury Park tapes leaked. A highly respected Sabbath collector contacted King Biscuit to inquire about the full release of their 1975 show, which was thought to be from Philadelphia by most people at the time. King Biscuit had been taking requests for future releases, so this was a completely legitimate request. Their initial response was that the show “wasn’t good enough”. But once the KB engineers had a listen to the tapes, they quickly discovered how wrong their assessment was. One of them even asked the collector to identify a song for them. It turned out to be “Spiral Architect”! Also, the tapes were identified as being from the Asbury Park show, NOT Philadelphia as previously thought. [Note: However, the engineer did claim the date was still 8/6/75, although the Asbury Park show has been proven to have been a day earlier. Sabbath performed in Philadelphia on 7/31/75.]

The King Biscuit kindly sent the collector a complimentary copy of the show, since there were now plans to release it officially. But when he tried to follow up on this release a few months later, the King Biscuit employee no longer worked there and the release was apparently nixed. And it was from this ‘advance promo’ that the current slew of Asbury Park bootlegs originated from.”