New York After Midnight

Whilst I totally applaud this recent flourish of interesting historic radio releases by a range of bands, which have reasonable-to-good sound quality but really rubbish CD titles and cheap covers, this one is a bit odd. It starts off well enough, with the soaring Solar Angels in New York, but then it inexplicably veers off, mid concert, to the Unleashed In The East album for Genocide, Exciter and the Ripper. Different country, different tour, different drummer, different decade…. Then it’s back to New York for the grand finale. Question is; why on earth did they do this?I can only guess that 'Hot Rockin', from the, then, new 'Point of Entry' album, was dropped as it didn’t flow on radio (along with Victim of Changes), which is absolutely baffling as it's a really great song from the album that this tour is promoting. Out of curiosity, I looked the actual song up on the ironically titled live bootleg ‘Hot Rockin At The Palladium’ and it’s an absolutely blinding and spirited performance - bizarre.What’s more annoying, though, is that this deception isn’t acknowledged anywhere, which sort of sours the whole album (it’s not mentioned at all in the background information provided above). This is all made more puzzling by the fact that on this radio release the manufacturers have actually bothered to use the Gull 'Judas Priest' logo and find pictures of the band from the right time period to grace the cover of the CD (with Rob sporting his hilarious YMCA moustache from the weird 'Don't Go' video) - so why go to this effort if you then redact songs from the actual concert and bung in a load of stuff from a tour in the 1970s? Did they think for a moment that any Priest fan on the planet wouldn't spot this jarring and unwelcome insertion from another live album that is well known for its iconic status?Solar Angels, though, is amazing as a set opener and probably worth the price of the CD on its own. Other highlights are the set closer Tyrant and "the ballad" Beyond the Realms of Death. It is a pretty warts-and-all performance, so Rob doesn't hit all the right notes and is singing in a rather nasally register (which is fine) and Dave Holland sounds like a robot playing a drum machine (which isn't, and never was, fine).However, keeping 'Hot Rockin' in the set would have made this a must-have and rare Point of Entry era release (ironically a still from the 'Hot Rockin' video, the one where Rob accidentally set his boots on fire, graces the cover of the CD) so dropping it has left the all important overall end to end live concert experience somewhat lacking (a bit like having your favourite scene from a movie dropped and being replaced by half an hour from a different film).Shame.

In response to O-mindcrime, it was the original broadcast that inexplicably featured Genocide/ Exciter/ The Ripper from Unleashed In The East. That is, it is not the doing of this label. Unfortunately, the cutting of Hot Rockin' and Victim Of Changes, after Desert Plains and You Don't Have[...] respectively, IS down to the label. Presumably to fit it onto a single CD, the label has dropped the wrong songs, alas. There are better unofficial versions of this.

Alles super, immer wieder

wer Judas Priest live Vinyl/Cds sammelt sollte hier zugreifen, der mitschnitt von juli 1981 hat einen super sound.

Radio Broadcast-Show von 1981. Klasse Sound für ein Bootleg. Allerdings sind die Tracks 10 und 11 (Exciter und Ripper) von der "Unleashed in the East" reingemogelt worden. Wen das nicht stört sollte sich das Teil zulegen.