Fjord Pleasure

Here is an album with the single worst pun in the universe as a title. GROAN!

From Roxy Art

From Roxy Art

This is an interesting compilation. It combines ten tracks from an (edited) radio broadcast with nine audience-recorded tracks from an earlier concert, both in Oslo in 2000. The design is by "opd" and this was traded and treed on the Avalon mailing list and, ideally, would never be sold. I do like the way that opd used the inside of the front to provide a translation of the announcer's opening chat and interstitials. Unfortunately, this is an old, low-quality scan of my printout of this CD-R, and I do not have original artwork files to share.

Beacon Theatre

From Roxy Art

From Roxy Art

This is some artwork made by the taper of this show for his own copy, and shared with the people with whom he swapped it. I always like it when artwork from a concert poster is incorporated into these sleeves.

The Avalon Ballroom

From Roxy Art

From Roxy Art

I love the cheek of calling this collection by this name. If you happened to be a grouchy manager-type who didn't like fan trading and you wanted to know where the heck this came from, and you also knew that there was a mailing list called Avalon...

Anyway, this is the same concept as the later double-disc As the World Turns, only done as a single disc and, I think, using only the handful of radio shows as the sources for the lineup. It actually repeats three performances from the earlier All Styles Served Here 2, suggesting that just because a mailing list can get behind a fan trading project, it doesn't necessarily follow that all its members have to agree on what the heck should go into it.

As with most of the mailing list trees spearheaded by the older, British fans, this was passed along with a sense of "official secrets act" plausible deniability and no names attached. The project coordinator and artwork designer are, unsurprisingly, anonymous.

Golders Green

This is a CD-R bootleg found in an Atlanta (Norcross) record store and purchased for $15.

From Roxy Art

From Roxy Art

I thought I might know who Dorian Graey was, but I'm not sure. They did CD-R bootlegs for several other artists, most notably Frank Zappa, and, as I'll come back to in some other entry, their stuff occasionally still turns up in area record stores.

Note the catalog number. Was this Dorian Graey's first release?

(Actually, the thing that Mr. Monopoly thought was a rotten jawdropper was seeing that catalog number while at the same time he was trying to do a CD club with the name POPocalypse. The POPocalypse CD club ended after 14 releases when Mr. Monopoly and his then-wife Tatiana separated, but there are Dorian Graey Zappa CDs out there numbered upwards of 20. Whomever was behind Dorian Graey, they like Zappa. Mr. Monopoly does not like Zappa. That should settle any suspicion.)

As the World Turns

This is a really interesting compilation album, designed by an anonymous artist.

From Roxy Art

From Roxy Art

The nicest thing about the 1999-2000 As Time Goes By tour is that Bry performed a hell of a lot of songs, way more than any subsequent tour. The set list kept evolving, although usually this meant more of the 1920s songs were dropped and more Roxy classics brought in. Consequently, no album of a single concert could have all 31 vocal songs, plus the six instrumentals, that were played on the tour.

I don't have a copy of this myself, but I bet that it's great fun to listen to. The artwork disappoints me; I don't care for fancy fonts on track lists, and sources for each performance would have been preferred. The front cover appears to be from the "Dance With Life" video, and the inside a shot of the girls from the "ow-ow-OW" part of "Let's Stick Together" from the Grand Rex DVD. Still, a terrific project overall.

These Vintage Years

This is a Mr. Monopoly "re-boot" of a show taped and sold by Mellow Recordings.

From Roxy Art

From Roxy Art

If I remember correctly, Mellow Recordings was one of those small-time CD-R labels up in New England, but he brought the wrath of U2's fandom, and consequently the RIAA, down on himself by selling CD-Rs at $40 a pop in some usenet trade group or something.

But before he went, Mellow taped Bry in Boston - the harp solo that opened Bry's As Time Goes By shows was truncated when an usher spotted him and told him to shut off his DAT - and put out this amazingly ugly CD, basic white with blocky black text and a single, huge, low-res photo of Bry from his 1999 appearance on Craig Kilborn's talk show.

Mr. Monopoly's redesign used a much smaller version of the cover photo as an inset in front of the image from the "Slave to Love" single. A deep red and gold theme was chosen, and four other screencaps from TheWebGal's collection of images from the performance of "Falling in Love Again" from Kilborn's show. A pretty simple, but, I think, elegant upgrade, especially if you ever saw that awful original.

Both Mellow Recordings' artwork and Mr. Monopoly's re-boot were treed extensively after somebody in the fandom purchased the CD-Rs from Mellow.

Cirque Royale

This is an example of a sale bootleg from Bry's As Time Goes By tour. Unfortunately, novice hands working the scanner and software that captured this (borrowed) disc left a slight moire pattern on the image, along with a slightly misaligned back cover.

From Roxy Art

From Roxy Art

It's my feeling that there was at least more professional sale bootleg from this tour than the archives will show, but this might have been the only "pressed silver disc." This one is from a company called Switch On! Devil Kwsk, and it is their only Ferry title*. Google suggests that the label also released one Blur bootleg and sixty gajillion David Bowie bootlegs. See earlier entries for mentions of CD-R bootlegs changing the playing field. Here's a case of a bootleg company getting huffy about being undercut by everybody else: click on that back cover and have a look at the disclaimer in the upper left-hand corner.

At any rate, this Brussels show was transmitted by a Belgian FM station, one of at least three radio broadcasts from this tour. Unfortunately, it was at the Toronto show that Bry sang a tune called "I Can't Get Started," and not either of the better known, and distributed by 'leggers, FM shows. This was another '30s cover, possibly rehearsed or recorded for the As Time Goes By sessions. In the absence of a legitimate live album from the tour, Cirque Royale is a terrific alternate. Every home should own one. Or a copy of one.


*Not true, apparently. Switch On! Devil Kwsk allegedly also bootlegged Roxy Music's 2001 Glasgow show as it appeared on BBC Radio, under the title "First Edition." I have not seen this CD.

As the Lights Go Down

I really have no idea who did this one. It was not Mr. Monopoly.

From Roxy Art

From Roxy Art

There's no credit at all on this sleeve, a policy with which I never agreed. There was an opinion held by a minority of traders that naming oneself, even in pseudonym, was tacky, and perhaps this came from one of them. It was most likely made by somebody familiar with the Avalon mailing list, as the designer was able to name three of the four instrumentals played during the earlier shows of Bry's 1999-2000 tour, and I recall that these were identified on that list as "Por una Cabeza," "Nightfall" and "I'm for it Too."

The back cover was made at far too low a resolution for any kind of quality printing, which is a shame, as I really like that photo used on the front. I wish I could have suggested that the designer ramp up the resolution on the back, and perhaps add some musician credits.