I wouldn’t say it’s ever exactly been easy to root out old recordings and video. I’ve spent maybe 5 years doing it now, and I love the process of finding leads, following them up, searching back for original source material through the sea of poor MP3 copies of copies and eventually creating a pool of the best quality material.
But recently, as I’ve exhausted much of what is possible through word of mouth and obsessive googling, the supply has somewhat dried up. Hence this appeal for help in locating anything there might be anywhere, in lofts or lock ups or backs of cupboards and getting it transferred and preserved. I’m looking in particular for bootlegs or personal concert recordings, for VHS or video of TV performances, radio interviews, absolutely anything. And it doesn’t matter if it’s in poor quality or apparently available elsewhere, it’s still worth knowing about as it may add something to the existing material.
The flipside is that I can make very high quality digitisations and restorations of analogue material. I’m always happy to pay return secure courier fees, and will often be prepared to buy items or find some other means of making a contact worthwhile on a financial or collecting basis. Usually I share the results with the fan community, but in some cases I agree not to.
Particular objects of desire include the 2000 Liverpool gig – the rest of the tour was recorded but this particular gig is missing apart from Cowboy Dreams and the encores due to an equipment malfunction. And the fabled Newcastle Mayfair 1984 recording available as a Camden Market bootleg but not circulating anywhere I’ve been able to locate, or anything from the German tour from the same year or the Italian 1986 tour. Someone somewhere must have a dusty cassette of the original “Let’s Change the World With Music” too, I’m sure they do…
So should you have anything at all, or any clues to anything, contact me via the form below, and we can discuss.