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Blueberry Hill Original Vinyl


William Austin

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I have heard the legendary Blueberry Hill concert many times in the form of the full show and original sequence, but just recently I got to hear a vinyl rip of the original album for the first time.

Now I don't know if the source of the recording I used to listen to on Youtube was not the actual Mike Millard recording, or if it had just lost a few generations of quality, but this original vinyl mix doesn't sound like the very good audience recording I was used to hearing... it sounds like a pretty decent soundboard recording.

It's easy to realize now why fans back then supposedly though that this was an official release (coupled with the fact that the bootleg business was still in its infancy then, so most fans probably wouldn't have known the difference).

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Right after I posted this, I saw another link for this show on Youtube.

This is clearly the same source as the vinyl rip except for the very beginning, in which we hear an inferior source up until a few seconds into Immigrant Song. The inferior source does appear to be the one I used to listen to because I recognize the stage announcer listing the names of the band members; and even though it is inferior, it still sounds really good.

Like I said before, Millard's recording sounds like a decent soundboard, and it's even more apparent here with the source change.

Which raises the question... 

How in the world was he able to capture the recording in such great sound?

I understand he would wheel himself up close to the stage with the recording equipment under his wheelchair, but no matter how close you get to the stage, the atmosphere and ambiance of being in the audience would probably still be heard on the tape.

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Thanks for posting this version! My first ever bootleg was Blueberry Hill (or BBC, can't remember for sure) and I got it from a friend. He found some old reel to reels up in his attic and what do you know, one of them was Live at Blueberry Hill. He thinks it must have been his father's. He dubbed it to cassette for me and I listened to it non stop. The crowd chatter in the version you shared is the same as my old copy and I've never heard it before on any other version. Nice share.

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3 minutes ago, William Austin said:

Like I said before, Millard's recording sounds like a decent soundboard, and it's even more apparent here with the source change.

Which raises the question... 

How in the world was he able to capture the recording in such great sound?

I understand he would wheel himself up close to the stage with the recording equipment under his wheelchair, but no matter how close you get to the stage, the atmosphere and ambiance of being in the audience would probably still be heard on the tape.

In an interview with Peter Grant from the 70s, he said that the guy who bootlegged Blueberry Hill had someone inside the show with some fancy transmitter thingy, while the recording was actually being done in a van out in the parking lot. Sophisticated stuff.

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The original Blueberry Hill vinyl was recorded from the audience by Dub and Ken of the Trademark of Quality label, using a Sennheiser shotgun mic into a Nagra reel to reel recorder, in mono.

The Rubber Dubber recording was an alternate tape, recorded from somewhere further back in the venue, in stereo. The story about being recorded outside the venue is a myth. Besides the fact that the technology didn’t even exist back then, the giveaway is that you can hear the audience nearby the recorder on the Rubber Dubber source, just like you would hear it on any audience tape. Same goes for that Montreux 71 tape that was claimed to be recorded from outside the venue; it wasn’t.

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7 hours ago, William Austin said:

Right after I posted this, I saw another link for this show on Youtube.

This is clearly the same source as the vinyl rip except for the very beginning, in which we hear an inferior source up until a few seconds into Immigrant Song. The inferior source does appear to be the one I used to listen to because I recognize the stage announcer listing the names of the band members; and even though it is inferior, it still sounds really good.

Like I said before, Millard's recording sounds like a decent soundboard, and it's even more apparent here with the source change.

Which raises the question... 

How in the world was he able to capture the recording in such great sound?

I understand he would wheel himself up close to the stage with the recording equipment under his wheelchair, but no matter how close you get to the stage, the atmosphere and ambiance of being in the audience would probably still be heard on the tape.

It is not a Mike Millard tape and it is not a soundboard. Mike Millard did not start recording Led Zeppelin concerts until 1975.

"Blueberry Hill" was recorded by the TMOQ guys and "Live at the LA Forum 9-4-70" was recorded by the Rubber Dubber guys.

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10 hours ago, William Austin said:

No kidding? Millard wasn't involved in this at all?

Is this a common misconception?

no kidding, indeed...Mike Millard wasn't involved with Blueberry Hill. It's like Pluribus stated, Ken and Dub recorded the Blimp/TMOQ mono audience recording with the clear intention  to release it as a double album. It's no secret Mike Millard hated bootleg. 

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