Black Glass


Format: 2CD
Catalog: NK 008-1/2 (from CDs), Eclipse Music
Produced: 1995 Japan
Date: 700429
Matrix:
  • Disc 1: NK008-1 512059
  • Disc 2: NK008-2 512060

    Cover:
    INSERT: Folded; front has small pictures of Rog, Rick, Dave and Nick, similar to the cover of Beatles 'Let It Be'; rear has photo of all four standing outside a caravan; inside has photo of band playing behind a ballet troupe. TRAY LINER: Plain white with tracklist, source and label info. DISCS: Split screen-printing; lower half has blue field broken by the legend "Psychedelic Dreams"; upper half contains a monochrome image of an arid desert landscape with a background consisting of six textured pyramids. In the close foreground a bound mummy regards the viewer through sunglasses. "Psychedelic Dreams" indeed...

    Sources:
    29 Apr 1970, Fillmore West, San Francisco Disc One (70:46): Recorded live at the Fillmore West, Apr 29 1970 Disc Two (58:17): Tracks 1 & 2 same as Disc One Tracks 3-5 Out-takes from "Meddle" LP Track 6 Out-take from "WYWH" LP Track 7 Nick Mason Christmas Single 1974

    Tracks:
    Disc 1:
    1. Grantchester Meadows 6:30
    2. Astronomy Domine 8:50
    3. Cymbaline 9:28
    4. Atom Heart Mother 20:42
    5. Embryo (fades in) 10:40
    6. Green Is The Colour/Careful... 14:32
    Total: 70:46

    Disc 2:
    1. Set the Controls... (fades in) 12:00
    2. A Saucerful of Secrets (fades out) 6:34
    3. One of These Days #1 4:29
    4. One of These Days #2 6:24
    5. Echoes 20:03
    6. Shine On You Crazy Diamond 6:34
    7. Nick's Christmas Song 2:10
    Total: 58:17

    Band:
  • Roger Waters
  • David Gilmour
  • Rick Wright
  • Nick Mason

    Comments:
    The 1st cd & the 1st 2 tracks from cd #2 are live. It claims to be the set from Fillmore West April 29 1970. The track listing is the same as the "Live In Winterland" ROIO for the live stuff. I'm assuming this is the same recording w/ the same sound quality as "Live In Winterland". The sound wasn't that great but with a big ugly EQ, I got it to sound o.k.

    I got cause I had never hear this particular set before & it was pretty cool. The review for "...Winterland" is right on the money so I won't repeat it here.... :-) On the back of the cd it claims that the live set is "...Much longer then previously released" I dunno if this is true or not...

    There is a hiss that is only on the first disk and it's only on the right channel (apparently the recording is in mono so it is possible to forego the hiss by splitting the left channel and taping it that way). The live tracks on the second disk (StCftHotS, ASoS) do not contain the annoying hiss.

    Track 3: Now.. this sounds like it could be a forgery. All this seems to be are the words "One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces." repeated over and over again over a tape of a guy talking about apparently a whole lot of nothing. The original bass line is present, cymbals crashing here and there and the semi-familiar synthesizer, and some sound effects. The door knocking sound makes it's appearance about 3:30 into the track.

    Track 4: This is more like it. I can believe that this is a true outtake.. seems to be a ROUGH but listenable working version. Starts off with the wind blowing and the line "One of these days..". Unlike the album cut, this one has that line repeated deep in the mix throughout almost the entire track. A little tape warble at about the 4:00 mark. Strange noise comes in at the 5:00 mark and subsides quickly. Ends with the line repeated several times accompanied by some wierd quitar screech sounds.

    Track 5: Hmm.. sounds like a different mix. Nothing really DIFFERENT about it.. seems to be a little fast but intentionally so. It is a bit short, only runs 20:02.. fades out after the last verse. Nothing really special here..

    Track 6: Apparently the "Hey-guys-I'm-tired-of-playing-in-the- studio-let's-go-try-it-in-the-large-empty-echoey-bathroom" version. Sounds like a run down of the parts that contain lyrics and omitted just about everything else. Again, I don't know if I can completely believe that this is a true outtake, but I'm leaning toward the "yes it is" on this one..

    Track 7: HAHAHAH !! I love this one.. a snippet of Rick and Nick working on a Christmas tune.. breaks down a couple times but it's really a neat song. Definately Floydian material !! (The liner note says "Nick Mason Christmas Single 1974")

    The integrity of the outtakes is definately debatable but I would tend to believe that they are real. The sound quality is pretty damned good.. the live stuff isn't too bad, listenable if you drop the right channel of the first disc.

    If these are the same ones that circulates among collectors, then:
    Track 5. Echoes is a fake. It's the Meddel version but a bit faster.
    Track 6. Shine on You Crazy Diamond is a fake. For better quality try the CD 'A Collection Of Great Dance Songs'
    Track 7. Here Comes Santa. I belive the name is 'Merry Christmas Song' but I could be wrong. It is probably from late 1969, maybe from Rome during the ZP sessions?

    I think this it the Live at Winterland cd, but with the studio outtakes. The first 'One Of These Day's' take is Nick saying that line over a tape of a dj - we can all guess who it is! The 2nd is more like the album version, but a lot rougher sounding. The version of 'Echoes' is very similar to the 'Meddle' version, but perhaps a liitle bit faster. And 'WYWH' is the band running through the vocal sections of the song, without the Sax, or fancy effects. And The Christmas Song is Nick's attempt at a seasonal number, but it tends to break down several times into laughter! Overall, a good cd. The sound quality is ok, but be warned, some of 'STCFTHOTS' & 'ASOS' have been cut.

    The Fillmore material seems to be the same as on the "Live At Winterland" CD, but times out about 2mins. shorter. This is probably a result of the faster tape speed employed for "Black Glass" (comparing the pitch of Roger's voice during his intro. to AHM on both issues). My copy of "Black Glass" has hiss on both channels of both discs; "Winterland" has much less hiss. In addition, the STCFTHOTS excerpt here suffers several unpleasant channel dropouts which are not present on the "Winterland" discs. Bottom line: If you're looking for the better version of the Fillmore material, stick with "Live At Winterland."

    Decent sound quality. Very good performance on the live stuff. Don't buy this title for the outtakes. Musically, Echoes is the same as the official (I did not compare the vocals). One of These Days (2 versions) is somewhat interesting and sounds like true outtakes. Even so, the song quickly gets repetitive and is not a song I would choose to have an outtake of. Shine On sounds like what the group used to lay the vocal tracks for the 2 sections. The vocals sound like the official version. In short, the supposed outtakes are very disappointing, and not worth the price of the second disc. As a result, this title has questionable value as a double cd. I picked it up for $28 (it was mismarked). I don't think I would want to pay $40 - $50 for it. The cd packaging is excellent. The picture of the band playing behind and above the ballet troupe is great. The shot of the band outside the trailer is an appropriate time period picture (no pig on Dave's shirt!).
    In the booklet, Rick Wright is credited with keyboards only, though I believe he does sing on this album. The man pictured on the discs is meant to be the Invisible Man, I think
    The Fillmore material on this disc matches the description of TSP's "Live at Winterland" (sic) quite accurately. Not having heard that disc I can't vouch for whether Eclipse/NK merely copied it, or got their own source (though they both apparently misspell "Grantchester Meadows"). However, the material suffers from quality and pitch problems that aren't typical of Swingin' Pig, so I doubt they copied LaW directly (digitally). On the other hand, the date and venue on this disc are correct, whereas Live at Winterland was, obviously, mislabelled.

    I find the concert material listenable but, for the most part, not especially enjoyable, notching about a VG. The performance is competent but not terribly exciting (with certain exceptions, mentioned below), though the band seems in a very good mood. Many of the songs have an "echo" effect on the vocals, and on GM and GITC it's kind of annoying. Several songs (Cymbaline and STCFTHOTS especially) have up to 2 full minutes of tuning, equipment adjustments and the like, which though they may add to authenticity, could easily have been cut or re-indexed. In regard to sound quality, I prefer nearly any track on "Total Eclipse" (for example, compare the tracks from Pepperland); there's just about no audience noise, save between songs, and the instruments and vocals are always quite audible, but there's a sizeable amount of hiss, some distortion, and the sound is somewhat "compressed", muffled and murky, though it is stereo. It almost sounds as if someone made a really great soundboard recording (I hear just about no audience noise on this set), and then high-speed-dubbed a fourth- or fifth-generation copy. Also, a little more than half of the material is too fast (though it isn't really objectionable): Grantchester Meadows, Astronomy Domine, and GITC/CWTAE are all 1/2 step sharp, Cymbaline and Embryo are about 1/4 step sharp, and AHM, STC and ASOS are fine. As to edits and cuts, GM is faded in just after the beginning of the song (but before the verse), as is Embryo. Frustratingly, the two most interesting tracks are also the most chopped: STC is faded in about halfway through the song, and ASOS is faded out only seconds into Syncopated Pandemonium. STC also suffers some strange "shifts" in sound, as if one stereo channel had dropped out and the other one had been panned center (i.e. the sound jumps into mono); this happens very briefly at 1:07 and 1:12, and for a longer period at 1:19-1:41. Despite their problems, though, for me these tracks are the high points of the concert; the quiet, "free" section after the climax of STC is wonderful, and what we have of ASOS is fairly impressive -- less formulaic than in many other performances, with Gilmour in particular expanding the introduction to much longer than usual. It's the sort of thing I could listen to for hours, especially if the sound quality were better. Embryo is also somewhat interesting, despite shifting recording levels near the beginning, with a strange middle section that is fairly different from the studio or the Sept. 16, 1970 versions; and CWTAE (which has more severe problems with the levels, especially right before 8:00 and 11:15) has some wild vocals (more so than usual!) before the screaming starts. On the other hand, Gilmour buggers GITC up fairly royally; he switches the 2nd and 3rd verses and misses the beginning of the 3rd verse, and his voice cracks several times on high notes (though right after that, he sings as high as I've ever heard him sing on his guitar solo, so go figure). GM is disappointing, AD is hampered by low levels, and Cymbaline is a standard rendition with a noticeably short footsteps sequence and *loud* (occasional distortion) vocals. By the way, at the beginning of AHM, while Roger's talking, Rick Wright makes some sort of musical joke to the audience, but I don't get it -- anyone know what the reference is?

    Now on to the studio material. First we have two alternate versions of "One of these Days", ostensibly out-takes from the Meddle album. Both are of VG/VG+ sound quality, a shade better than the concert material but not enough to matter, and neither has any speed problems. I'm not going to get mixed up in the debate over whether these are genuine -- I believe them to be fakes -- but musically, they're completely uninteresting and not worth your time.

    Now we're offered a supposed out-take for Echoes. Well, I listened to this one fairly carefully, and as far as I can tell, it is literally nothing more than a direct copy of the album version, without even a *hint* of alteration save that the beginning is buggered up and the ending is faded out, but with the same thin, hissy sound as the rest of these tracks -- and, to top it all off, it's too fast, clocking in at a half-step sharp. A fake, and a dumb one at that.

    SOYCD is also a fraud, but at least it's a little trickier. The sound is better on this one, maybe scraping an Ex-, and it's a little bit slow, perhaps a quarter-step. It fades in at the beginning of Part 2 and back out early in Part 8 (I believe). Its claim to fame is that the two halves of the song are edited together, with all the verses appearing sequentially, bridged by the same guitar line that originally precedes one of them. Otherwise the track is identical to the WYWH version. Now, I don't own A Collection of Great Dance Songs, but SOYCD is on that album as a single track, the two halves having been joined on that album as well; I'm inclined to guess that this is nothing more than a copy of that cut. Even if it's not lifted from ACOGDS, any idiot with decent digital audio software on his computer could easily have pulled those edits off. Either way, it's lame.

    Finally, Here Comes Santa. Back to VG/VG+ sound, and it *might* be a touch fast (though I have nothing to which to refer to verify that save traditional concert tuning). It seems authentic (who would fake something like this?), and it's funny the first time you hear it -- but you've got to be pretty die-hard to want to pay RoIO prices for this sort of thing.

    Black Glass sits squarely on the line that divides RoIOs of historical/completist value from RoIOs you actually listen to more than once. The concert material is quite interesting at its best, but the mediocre sound, speed problems and annoying edits keep it from being more than an occasional listen; the studio material, however, is mostly fake or dubious, and though it was a laudable decision to increase the running time of the set by 40 minutes over the TSP release, the fraudulent nature of this "filler" material really drags down the overall impression of this RoIO -- and if comments above are correct and Winterland has better sound for the Fillmore gig, then it's just a $45 turkey. Buy it if you feel adventurous or can't get LaW, but otherwise save your money.