Passing Through Air - Bootleg LP

Bootleg release manufactured in the '80s by Rock Solid Records. The people behind Rock Solid Records were responsible for quite a few of these bootleg releases back in the day, and considering how horrendously bad the sound quality is on a lot of their live LPs, it's more than surprising how decent the sound quality really is on this one.

The really interesting thing about LP bootlegs are the record jackets. When they were first being produced, the jackets were very low grade and amateurish. They basically started out as a white blank jacket with a loose photocopied piece of paper that listed the tracks and had a really low grade photo of Kate printed onto it. By the time Passing Through Air was made, the sleeves had improved 100% in quality. They were full colour and even had a laminated finish. In fact, the quality of them was so good, they actually looked like legitimate record jackets you'd find in a record shop.

Being a double vinyl release, this bootleg offered quite a few b-side songs which, at that time, could only be found on The Single File box set. The box set for This Woman's Work hadn't even been conceived at that point. It also featured some live tracks and some remixes. You'll note that the remix for The Big Sky is incorrectly named. Bootlegs are famous for their grammatical errors and other blunders.

Another thing you never saw on these record labels was Kate's name - partially or in full. The really early produced bootlegs even had fake song titles listed on the labels. This was done to avoid getting caught, and it made it much easier to distribute and sell this stuff.

 
This is probably one of the very few really nicely made bootleg LPs that's worth having. It has a great quality sleeve and the sound recording is pretty fantastic.

I should also probably point out that there's a bootleg CD with the same title and cover art as the LP version. The CD version does not have the same material as the LP bootleg. The CD version actually has a collection of demos on it, so just keep in mind that the LP and CD versions are completely different if you go looking for them.