A couple weeks ago when I did Cathedral as the Frydee video, it wasn’t just because they’re awesome. Truth is, I had my evil little eye on a bootleg on eBay called Cosmic Funeral after the track from Statik Majik. I wound up winning it for about $20, and unlike most of the dumbass sight-unseen bootleg purchases I make, this one was completely worth every penny. The package showed up in the mail this week and had a full jewel case, silver-backed disc with professionally-printed artwork.

I can’t remember the last time I got a bootleg of this quality. It’s been a while, anyway. Even the ones you get these days with the really good inkjet jobs are usually CDRs, and I don’t really have a problem with that (obviously, or I wouldn’t buy them), but this whole thing just smacks of the ’90s. There’s no info on where the show was, but the art is killer and it says it was “recorded live on tour, 24-05-94,” and the internets tell me it was Milan, which since the disc says “Made in Italy” on it I’m inclined to believe.

In the classic CD bootleg fashion, there’s a mail order form in the liner notes. I was never brave enough to fill one of those out — I mean, what do you do if you spend $200 and never get sent anything? — but it’s a great reminder of what buying these kinds of discs used to be like, as opposed to now where you get charged twice as much for an inferior product. Blah blah blah, things aren’t like they used to be, harumph. I’m old.

The sound isn’t the best — it’s not bad; Lee Dorrian keeps asking for “more volume” — but just the thought at this point of owning a genuine Cathedral bootleg rules enough to make the expense worth it. There are reportedly a couple others out there, but I can’t imagine they’re easy to find, and with the band reportedly retiring after their next album, I wouldn’t think that’s about to change. The “death” of the compact disc has its ups and downs, but as a collector, I’m happy to get the chance to nerd out like this every now and again.

Here’s the “Cosmic Funeral’ video for anyone who didn’t get the “disco supernova” reference in the header above:

Tags: Cathedral, UK

This entry was posted on Friday, May 20th, 2011 at 4:03 pm and is filed under Buried Treasure. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.