Made in Germany [Import]

I picked this up in India and being a long (40 years now) Spirit fan I can say it is the best of the group caught live. Recording is done very well and better than most of the "club" tour recordings

Let me start out by saying that this is a pretty decent disc, on its own merits. A glitch or two notwithstanding (this is live material from 1978, after all), the sound quality is pretty good, and the performances are excellent. The booklet is nice and even contains song lyrics. But before you shell out your hard-earned green for it, you need to be aware of something...

The title of this compilation is "Made In Germany", which, to any normal and reasonable person, would imply that these performances were from a concert somewhere in Germany. There is nothing on the outside package to indicate otherwise. CDs of live Spirit performances tend to be scarce and hard to come by; most are imports and many are out of print. So if you're a hardcore fan like myself-- and let's face it, you're probably not going to buy this otherwise-- you're probably going to do as I did. That is, to say to yourself, "Cool! I don't have anything recorded in Germany yet, this must be something I've never heard!" and promptly buy it. Only when you get the disc home and open it (you own it now-- no turning back) do you find, in tiny, fine print, on the back of the booklet, that these performances were not recorded in Germany at all. In truth, they were compiled from gigs in London, Tampa and Miami. Good stuff, granted. The problem is that all of this material is available elsewhere. In fact, there have been at least three different releases that I know of (and there are probably more) that contain this exact same material under different titles. Granted, the others are out of print, and this release actually pre-dates at least one of them. But that isn't the point. Why title this disc "Made In Germany" if there are absolutely no performances on the disc of German origin? Where does that title come from? Perhaps the disc was manufactured in Germany (mine doesn't specify), but that's hardly an excuse. It would appear to me that the title is an intentional deception, intended to trick suckers like me into buying material that we already own. It would have been just as easy-- and much more honest-- to list the origin of the performances on the outside packaging, so buyers would know what they were getting before making the purchase.

If you don't already have this material, this is really a pretty nice disc. But I, for one, feel completely ripped off. This disc isn't cheap, either. If you can find one used for a good price I'd recommend picking up "Live at The Rainbow, 1978" instead, an out of print UK import which contains virtually everything this disc has (minus one song), plus over a half-dozen other tracks from the same three gigs. The sound quality is very good (though it also has a minor glitch or two), and it offers much more bang for the buck.

And they didn't lie to you about what you were getting.