Anyone know where to find a copy of this? It's damn near impossible except to pay a bootlegger. Can anyone help a fellow fan out? I'm dying to see it.

Hi

I have this bootleg.
If I can satisfy a stone fan, then I upload this album :

Cover Back :
[www.sendspace.com]

Cover front :
[www.sendspace.com]

Don't forget to share yours gem's stone.

Looks like a nice little cd, appreciate an upload. TIA

@#$%& Blues
SBD recordings

1. @#$%& Blues ( London, Olympic Sound Studios & Newbury, Stargroves, MRU march-may 1970)

2. Brown Sugar (London, Olympic Sound Studios 18.12 1970 w/Eric Clapton & Al Kooper)

3. Brown Sugar (Newcastle, City Hall 13.9 1973, 1st show)

4. @#$%& (Newcastle, City Hall 13.9 1973, 1st show)

5. Dancing With Mr. D (London, Wembley, Empire Pool 9.9.1973)

6. Angie (Newcastle, City Hall 13.9 1973, 1st show)

Track1 :
[www.sendspace.com]

Track 2 :
[www.sendspace.com]

Don't forget to share yours gem's stones.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2006-04-23 10:43 by stalemate97.

Try Google - you might be able to do a trade.

There's been four "factory pressed" editions that I know of:

The first on the Portugese/ Argentine (you takes your choice) Classic label, was a fairly loveless affair with minimal menu and nowt in the way of extras. The overall picture quality was good (ish).

The second edition to appear was on The Old Bastards label (location unkown probably a retirement home for irritable old bootleggers). This was sourced from the self same identical copy used by The Classic Productions label but with nice menus the addition of audio takes of C.S. Blues (including the Woodstock '78 rehearsals version) and the most complete version of The Montreaux '72 rehearsals - filmed for The beat Club and O.G.W.T.)

Then there was the WOW edition which was a direct copy (as in all things WOW) of the GlimTwins DVDR which touted itself as The Definitive Edition. It wasn't...
It suffered from a lot of lateral ghosting and the sound was less distinct than the previous two editions. Colour saturation was on a par with the original film tho...

Then with a mighty roll of drums came the 4REELS "Big @#$%& Blues" supposedly the best ever edition from a hitherto unknown source, plus extras.

Well the extras were great and it has to be said regarding some of the material - Brown Sugar L.A. 1973 and the Stones Saville Theatre '69 appearance unsurpassed in terms of quality. But sadly the meat of the matter @#$%& Blues itself despite all the protestations of fans in terminal denial (i.e. "if you view it on a giant TV screen in a darkened room and get yourself well and truly wasted before attempting to watch it, it's actually fantastic... promise...") was actually dire.

That being said it was unusual in that it contained scenes previously missing from the editions mentioned above including some where it's obvious why even the print that occasionally gets shown once every ten years ain't a gonna reveal quite who was doing what backstage (as some of us are now seriously signed up members of the establishment) which I'm sure you'll appreciate.

What no one bothered to point out at the time presumably because no one could be bothered to hang in with the horrible flaring, and overall mushiness that made this edition the worst of the lot, was that the film despite the additional scenes was the shortest of tall as it ended abruptly with the Stones coming off stage at the end of Street Fighting Man and completely excised the slo-mo outro with Keith somnambulently intoning the lyrics to Brown Sugar and Mick's upraised finger providing the final lingering image of what for even the most dedicated Stones fan is a bit of a marathon. In a bizarre moment of hubris 4REELS decided to make some kind of formalisation of the film's ending by adding the final credits - BUT from a source so degraded that you'd be hard put to it to actually be able to read them.

So 4 REELS extras great but 4REELS C.S. Blues film - dire.

So that's all you had until a few weeks ago when I stumbled over the best copy I've yet seen. Evidently from the same source as the 4REELS version but pure and unsullied by people over-tweaking DVD authoring software (or whatever it was that happened at the 4REELS labs) and as well as the additional scenes the complete ending with credits you can read and a sharpness and richness of colour previously unseen on all other releases.

Like a lot of the real gems (such as the alternate edit of Charlie is my Darling in truly stunning quality)available on DVDR only but do a little research and you'll unearth it.

Files are in .shn format (SHN SoftSound Shorten Lossless Compression)

You need free plugin to burn with nero.
[www.softpedia.com]

Track 3:
[www.sendspace.com]

Track 4:
[www.sendspace.com]


Don't forget to share yours gem's stones.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2006-04-23 11:00 by stalemate97.

Track 5:
[www.sendspace.com]

Track 6:
[www.sendspace.com]


That's all folks !!

Don't forget to share yours gem's stones.

mikey

thanks for the full @#$%& Blues story. no doubt you are inundated with PMs from people wanting to trade. do you plan to make this newly discovered version available as a torrent or vine ? and is there an easy way to identify this best version from others (a menu or other ID ?)

warhol

ps - what is the alternate ending to Charlie Is My Darling ?

Hi Warhol (as in Andy?),

Unfortunately I just don't have the technology, but if you leaf back through the Hot Stuff pages, back through the mists of time you'll see that I posted a review of this gem titled "C.S. Blues - The Real Deal" and someone very obligingly did offer a download link.

The interesting thing was that I sourced this copy through a lover of cult films, he's not a Stones collector per-se and so when he described this version as awesome, he wasn't quite as prone to the rose tinted spectacles take on Stones DVD collectables as other reviewers are. It's still not a perfect copy but to contextualise if you compare scenes with what's available on Four Flicks, 25X5 or Video Rewind (remember that one?) there's not a lot to choose and in fact in the last case Video Rewind this source is a tad better. The colour concert footage is superb, all the dialogue is at last audible (even allowing for the whirr of the Super 8mm camera that it was largely filmed on. This to a certain extent explains the discrepancies in picture quality as the concert footage was (as I recall) mainly shot on 16 and 35 mm. Some of the monochrome footage is still grainy and there are video and celluloid (as well as digital) artifacts evident here and there. The source film is on three half hour reels and there are obvious markers where these occur.

But to my mind (and I am hard to please) this is far and away the best version to surface.

The alternate ending from the recently unearthed Charlie is my Darling really is different takes of Mick and Keef with the Loog Oldham doing an inebriated rendition of Blueberry Hill, along with the Elvis "Santa Bring My Baby Back to Me", different shots of them hanging around the airport reading what looks like a Life magazine reporting on the Chicago riots. The film was shot almost immediately after their R.S.G. I Got You appearance in early September and the Watts riots occured in early August.

THe film on DVD is really breathtakingly good and unlike the (very) briefly released before it was literally pulled from the shelves Aussie DVD doesn't look like some scratchy old film from 1945. This one really is superb with no scratches and fantastic detail - even skin tones quite apparent, and is as mentioned a completely different edit.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2006-04-23 14:15 by mikey.

mikey

thanks for more info on these different versions.

the documentary footage in @#$%& Blues was shot on 16mm, probably the concert footage too. i've seen the film projected, and a lot of the washed out, undefined quality is a feature of the original, not only the result of dodgy video transfers in the past.

warhol

Hi warhol,

Yes you're right about Frank and (the late for obvous reasons) Danny Seymour shooting the film on 16mm. But the concert footage according to a review in the Guardian was shot by an entirely different crew.

One of the 16mm cameras Frank was using had a light leak in the magazine which again accounts for a lot of the washed out undefined tone you mention in the monochrome sequences - this film is never going to be on a par with "Gimme Shelter" in terms of crispness and chromatics - but then that was never the intention.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2006-04-24 09:13 by mikey.

A dvd version of this (made on stand-alone recorder), is available here, via bit torrent download:


[rollingstones.kicks-ass.org]