The New Barbarians and The Rolling Stones – Blind Date – CNIB 1979 2nd show (No Label)
“Canadian National Institute for the Blind Benefit” Oshawa Stadium, Toronto, Canada 22nd April 1979 (2nd Show)
Soundboard – Disc 1 – THE NEW BARBARIANS – DJ Intro / Intro by John Belushi / Sweet Little Rock’n Roller / F.U.C. Her / Breathe On Me / Infekshun / I Can Feel The Fire Burnin’ / Am I Grooving You / Bass-Drum Jam / Seven Days / Before They Make Me Run
Disc 2 – THE ROLLING STONES – Intro / Prodigal Son / Let It Rock / Respectable / Star Star / Beast Of Burden / Just My Imagination / When The Whip Comes Down / Shattered / Miss You (with Stanley Clarke) / Jumping Jack Flash / Outro.
LP Source – Disc 3 – THE NEW BARBARIANS – DJ Intro / Intro by John Belushi / Sweet Little Rock’n Roller / F.U.C. Her / Breathe On Me / Infekshun / I Can Feel The Fire Burnin’ / Am I Grooving You / Bass-Drum Jam / Seven Days / Before They Make Me Run
Disc 4 – THE ROLLING STONES – Intro / Prodigal Son / Let It Rock / Respectable / Star Star / Beast Of Burden / Just My Imagination / When The Whip Comes Down / Shattered / Miss You (with Stanley Clarke) / Jumping Jack Flash / Outro.
Circa 9 years ago, the Godfather label released the single disk CD, ‘Court Order’, the Rolling Stones concert at the Oshawa Stadium, Toronto, featuring the second set’s soundboard recording, also one New Barbarians track and a bunch of Keith Richards demos, recorded in 1977, after his drugs bust: The original GSparaco review for that release can be found here. After all this time, the No Label guys have produced an expanded edition and present their version over four CDs, the first two CDs featuring the soundboard recordings from Keef and Ronnie’s own supergroup and the Stones set that followed (The second concerts soundboard is still the only one that has been ‘found’, high hopes for the first) patched in with with a couple of alternate sources as required (In ‘I Can Feel the Fire’ and ‘Respectable’, respectively), Disks three and four feature audio taken from an LP source – Different but the same in many respects.
Because of the legacy of the recording, the No Label group are at pains to note that the original Swingin’ Pig CD release was caked with an awkward layer of Noise Reduction, a covering that is stripped back here as a source that is closer to the soundboard and without the NR applied. Like a lot of the Stones soundboards from this era, it features a little flutter at the beginning as the tape has lost a little of it’s flex and bake in the intervening years, this is literally a momentary thing however, and it only interferes with John Belushi’s intro. The sound is that typical vintage sound – You know the one, a murmur of appreciation from the crowd between tracks, in the way that they sound as distant as to be on Mars, the musicianship captured as akin to an early studio outtake, the vocalist usually pushed up the highest in the mix, guitar and drums after, bass and peripheral others at the bottom.
The LP recording meanwhile is of an exceptional quality. The pre-release blurb makes a mention of this source as being one of Ken Douglas’ productions, taken from a very clear quality dub of one of his early pressings on Pod Records, titled simply, ‘Blind Date’. Here the audience are louder than the soundboard source, it’s more a natural sound, if a little masked and muffled. What you get from one version, you seemingly lose with the other, I would certainly argue for the soundboard source but for those of you with a clear basement and memories of that old pressing, you’ll enjoy the dub for nostalgic reasons.
The CDs are housed in a fat-boy jewel case with graphics that are very close to the original Swingin’ Pig CD release with a few more images from the show and some beautiful silkscreened disks (Colour for soundboard, B&W for the LP recording), As this show celebrates it’s 40th year this year, it finally gets the full outing that it deserves and is now the definitive release to own.
