I remember being pretty excited when I found this record. I was in London for a night before going to the airport. In a lot of ways, it was a bad time to go record shopping - I was going away for nearly two weeks, going to Heidelburg, Vienna and Lancaster before going back to my parents' house for just three nights before going back to Australia for another six months. Not only did I have to lug this, a couple of other records I bought in London (and the ones I bought on my travels) on a number of flights and trains, I also had only three days to enjoy it (I frantically recorded all the records I bought that fortnight onto tape before going back to Canberra, but somehow missed off a whole side of the Murder City Devils live LP, something I was annoyed to find out when I tried to play it in Oz). After buying this, I stayed at my friend Jo's house and we watched the Johnny Depp version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and had an early night ahead of my flight; there's a detail no one cares about.
Anyway, I was really into The Mars Volta at the time. I'd enjoyed Deloused in the Comatorium but really got into them on Frances the Mute (an album I'd still argue is their finest). During my first six months in Australia, they released Scab Dates which contained some incredible live recordings along with some frustratingly long field recordings of bollocks. This record - a straight-forward live recording from the sound-desk at a London show in 2003 - was then right up my street. The tracklisting is basically all of Deloused (in order) along with Concertina from the Tremulant EP (which I bought about six months later, just before I left Australia for good). On top of that, the sleeve stated that it was for promotional use only (but probably actually a bootleg) as well as singing the praise of being a purely analog recording, something I was pleased to see other people consider important, having had frequent and irritating conversations with my friend Tom about whether digital could be better than analog - see the last picture for the full text. I also bought the 12" single of Frances the Mute that day.
The quality of this recording is perfectly fine - you couldn't call it outstanding, but it does the job. What is perfect is the band, who are on incredible form. The thing that amazes me is that I saw them just two months after this recorded and they were terrible. I remember being really excited to see them at Reading Festival and they played what felt like two songs over a 45-minute set - two elongated jam-fests (which I might enjoy now to be honest, but wasn't in the mood for at the time). I can't have been the only person in the audience who was hoping to hear Inertiatic ESP. In hindsight, we were probably being treated to some early versions of songs from Frances the Mute, but we weren't to know. I saw them a handful of other times over the years and had far better experiences after that - their set at Southside Festival in 2009 was particularly brilliant. The version of Cicatriz ESP is far more enjoyable than the version on Scab Dates because you don't have to fast-forward ten-minutes of bollocks to get the huge climax. The recording of Televators is pretty breath-taking too - Cedric's voice on top form - and Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt is a superb closer. I think for a long time they'd take the stage and introduce themselves as a different band - on this particular show they came on stage with the line "Hello, we're Mudvayne", a nu-metal band that I'm sure most people have long forgotten. It's a strange blast from the past whenever I play this album.
Despite being a bootleg/promo/"unofficial release", copies of this album seem to be about two or three times more than I paid for it, which is always nice (although peanuts compared to how much the reissue of Deloused is now going for - and to think I complained about my copy costing £27, an annoyingly common price for an LP these days). A nice bonus was that the two records are on coloured vinyl - transparent yellow and blue. Whilst not strictly an official release, I'm very glad this is sat in my collection and that I decided to lug it around Europe rather than leave it in Selectadisc that rainy January day. I miss The Mars Volta, so it's nice to have a live recording of some of their best songs.
Format: Double 12", plain sleeve, insert, promo-only
Tracks: 9
Cost: £20 new
Bought: Selectadisc, London
When: 13/01/06
Colour: Transparent yellow and transparent blue
Etching: none
mp3s: no
