Another massive Bruce Springsteen silver has been pressed and released. Madison Square Garden 2009 (no label) is a 6CD set containing the November 7th and November 8th, 2009 shows from New York. Both are sourced from soundboard tapes.
Black Sabbath Dark Knight (no label) documents the November 18th, 1980 show from Nakano Sunplaza, Tokyo, Japan.
Yngwie J. Malmsteen’s Rising Force Enslaving Tonight (Calm & Storm 009) is another release on the new label documenting the Yubin Chockin Hall, Tokyo, Japan show on January 27th, 1985.
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Black Sabbath’s November 18 1980 show is a strange one. We have an audience that is so good it sounds like a SB; a radio-broadcast that sounds more like an audience recorded close to the keyboards; a new audience that is something between the two. ‘Dark Knight’ (No Label) is the same source tape as the highly-regarded ‘Angel and Demon’ (Faith Records FCD1 7002/624034-2, released in 1998). (The insert and CD of ‘AaD’ are marked ‘made in the EU’, but I believe it’s generally accepted to be a Japanese issue. Certainly I never saw it at any of the UK record fairs, and I obtained my copy from Japan, as one of my first ever internet purchases.) Despite what both CDs claim, it is NOT a SB tape, but an excellent – IMO near-perfect – audience recording. It was a listen through headphones that convinced me it is an audience source. For all those years ‘AaD’ has been one of my prized bootlegs, but ‘Dark Knight’ is a lower gen and a concrete upgrade. It is, for me, the best of all the Nov 18 shows: the radio broadcast is not known as ‘the Geoff Nicholls Mix’ for nothing, and ‘Evil Man’ (Calm and Storm) is a new, different audience source. This latter sounds like it was recorded a little over to Geezer’s side, and is not as good a balance as ‘Dark Knight’, although still very good in itself. However, the taper is surrounded by noisy shouters, whom I find annoying. Interestingly, the noisy shouters on the radio broadcast can just be heard on ‘Evil Man.’ Both No Label and particularly Calm and Storm could do to improve the artwork, with more shots of the band and less of the Gothic imagery, but I’m grateful for them for these sterling titles. If you want only one, I recommend ‘Dark Knight’.