Mott The Hoople unofficial CD: "Long Red"

Sleeve and track listing

Oh Boy 1-9036.

Review

This CD is an amalgam of two radio shows; one a King Biscuit Flower Hour show featuring four tracks from Mott's legendary performance at New York's Uris Theatre in 1974, and the other featuring a performance from a radio show Mott recorded in Stockholm in 1971. The New York tracks are taken straight from a radio show CD which was issued in 1989, whilst the Stockholm tracks are taken from a late 1980's FM broadcast of the original show.

The performance on the New York tracks is nothing short of stunning; you can tell just by listening to it that something special is going on. The Stockholm performance is also strong, marred slightly by a weak mix (the radio station's engineer not being familiar with the songs), and also the radio concert policy (in those days) of "not too loud, guys". Sound quality is otherwise very good.

More recently (mid-90's), this recording was issued as a limited edition picture disc (vinyl).

Note that the Stockholm concert has now been released commercially as From Stockholm To Philadelphia with a much better mix and stunning sound quality. Thus this CD is now downgraded to a "for completists only" tag.

Warning: this CD has recently been re-issued in Japan. It is simply a CD-R copy of the original, straight onto a blank CD-R (no label), and with a poor quality copy of the original sleeve.