Journey Through the Past Live in Essen, West Germany - Sept.22.1979

Journey Through the Past - LP Issued 1987 Audience recording

Songs as listed on cover WHITE = corrections SIDE-1 Rock'n Roll Band Shattered Images Peace of Mind Feelin' Satisfied Don't Look Back The Journey SIDE-2 More Than a Feeling Instrumental A Man I'll Never Be SIDE-3 Smokin' Tom's Improvisation Slow Blues (This Time ) SIDE-4 Foreplay/Long Time Something About You Party

Rare, not perfect, but interesting...

Journey Through the Past was the first bootleg that I ever found from the second tour. It remains to this day one of my all-time favorites despite it's shortcomings. Maybe it's that bright yellow color of the album jacket that cheers me up... Or maybe it's just that nostalgic feeling you get when you play an LP.

The set is somewhat short but features a few unreleased tracks - Shattered Images, This Time, and an early version of Get Organ-ized. An interesting tidbit: this is the first and only concert (that I can think of at the moment) where Brad tells us the name of the second song, Shattered Images, which just about everybody calls "Help Me". My favorite moment in the show is the superb performance of Brad in A Man I'll Never Be. I really love how that song is performed on this tour, with full instrumentation, but especially this night. And as always, there is the super extended organ solo in the middle of Smokin'.

If it weren't for some bizarre mechanical clicking, the sound quality from this boot would be top-notch. Even still, it's pretty good, but that clicking can at time be distracting. Just what is that clicking anyway? My guess is that we are hearing the mechanics of the tape recorder through it's own mic. In transferring this recording to CD, I used digital noise removal to cancel out the clicking and discovered that with it gone, there is still a somewhat distracting level of hiss. But it's not too bad and I still give this a pretty good rating, even if it does sound like it was taped from the nose bleed section.

The artwork is relatively boring, but somewhat decent, and perhaps a bit embarrassing. The front cover features a relatively rare image (found only on the backstage pass and Euro-Tour program) of the Boston spaceship flying over Europe. It is very blurry which makes me think it was taken not from the laminated pass, but the cloth stick-on pass. The back cover is a hand tracing of the Boston spaceship from the inside album sleeve of Don't Look Back. The embarrassing part is the very obvious thumbprint at the bottom. Hehehe... But the artwork isn't the real reason we buy these things, is it?

Bottom line is if you love this tour and love LPs, then this is the boot for you. This boot has its flaws, but it still manages to shine amongst the others from this tour. I'd summarize this bootleg by saying that it is... interesting, which isn't necessarily bad consider all the UNinteresting boots there are (especially of the '77 Long Beach show).

Other bootlegs from this tour: Don't Look Back
Party To Boston FREE CD offer!
Journey Through the Past
Cherry Blossom Tour
JFK
Tokyo Day 3
Tokyo Day 1
Party at Stadium 1979 new!

Back to Boston