Introduction

Bootlegging is of all times, but the means and goods being "smuggled" keep changing over time. In the seventies and eighties, fans traded audience recordings of concerts on tapes and cassettes. In the nineties bootleg CDs were pressed and sold, sometimes in legitimate music stores. They contained unreleased soundtrack music, LPs that didn't make it to CD (yet), or they compiled the B side tracks from singles from the past. During the first decade of the new millennium, burning (and sadly also selling) private CD-Rs of rare recordings became popular, while at present those recordings are mostly shared as "movies" on YouTube, or exchanged in digital format through other channels.

The Elsewhere site's focus will always remain on Vangelis' official output. But with the wide variety of illegal recordings in any shape or form intruding into the official market - and confusing customers - we can't ignore this unofficial segment completely. Therefore we list some of the most seen or talked about "products" in the illegal domain.

This section contains information on the existence of these items. It is not in any way intended as encouragement to buy or sell those products. To the contrary. Bootlegs are not approved by Vangelis, nor does the money paid for them end up with those who creatively or financially invested in them, in other words, made them possible.

Bootlegs

Bootlegs are generally defined as illegal releases of material that was not officially released by the artist. The contents may exist of leaked unreleased soundtrack music, audience recordings of live concerts, recordings from LPs that did not make it to a CD release, or music compiled from other sources (other than official CDs by an artist)

This was often done for profit, pressed on CD with semi professional artwork, which can be seen as a distinction from the fan compiled material often referred to as "private releases".

The following releases could be considered the most famous Vangelis bootlegs:

Blade Runner tape

The very first of the bootlegs, contains selections of the original score, was sold in Hollywood in 1982 just before the film was released. Rumors of the soundtrack not being sold made it popular instantly.

OWM Blade Runner

The most famous of the Blade Runner bootlegs, and certainly the first on CD. Made in 1992, after themes but two years before the official Vangelis CD. Released in a limited, numbered edition of 2000 copies on the "Off World Music" label. It was well distributed via some of the bigger CD shops in the States and also through on-line music stores. It was also very well made, with the appearance of a professional CD. The sound quality was rather poor, introducing noise, distortion and a poor audio spectrum. But at least they were the Vangelis recordings! Quite some tracks are still unreleased, even on Blade Runner Trilogy, and some that were are longer than the album versions. Many fans regard it's quality as very listenable, and sometimes prefer it because the music is 'pure', compared to the official Warner release from 1994, not having been recompiled, edited or mixed with dialogue from the movie. All selections are as they were in the film itself (though often more complete, where versions in the film fade out, the CD continues).

Gongo Blade Runner

A bootleg CD masquerading as a Romanian CD, but in fact produced for the American market, profiting from the rarity of the OWM bootleg. Quite likely sourced from the OWM CD, but slightly processed to sound a bit better but the quality is not even slightly close to the official 1994 release though. The overall track selection is slightly different, but all of the Vangelis tracks have been included.

The Bounty

A 2CD from the makers of the OWM Blade Runner release. This time the OWM brand stands for "One-world-music". The CDs contain lots of Vangelis music, as well as the traditionals that appeared in the movie as if they were played on the set. The sound quality is mostly pretty bad, except for the tracks where they replaced the leaked material with the same tracks taken from the official Themes release. Often discussed is a long track on the album which does not seem to originate from the mastertapes for the film. It is a 20 minute compilation of themes from the film, appearing elsewhere on the album. It led to speculations amongst fans that it was intended for possible release on an album, but really seems to be mixed and edited by the bootleggers.

The Sky and His Shadow

A Jon Anderson bootleg with his long improvised instrumental recording from 1975, which was never released. Some rumors (and they are probably actually just rumors!) say it was in fact recorded with Vangelis. Highly debatable, but worth a mention here.

Earth

One of Vangelis' early albums released during the LP era, was for a long time not available on CD. In this period, no less than two professionally pressed bootlegs were released, their audio sources from the LP. An official CD has however been released in Greece in 1996 so these bootlegs could now technically be considered as "counterfeit" CDs. The one and only official release is Polygram Greece's CD on the Vertigo label (532 783-2). Problem with the Greek CD however is that it was mastered with extra reverb, an alteration not appreciated by many fans. The bootlegs retain the original LP sound. Complete with clicks and static noise.

Themes 2 (Polygraph)

A professional looking release from 1997, but riddled with goofs and glitches. The Cosmos theme was taken from a bad quality LP, while it is available in good quality on Heaven and Hell CDs (and others), the Fete Sauvage track is actually from Ignacio, the Sex Power track is the opening theme, which is certainly not the main theme the track title promises. Most embarrassing however is the title which seems to position it as a follow up to Polydor's famous "Themes" album. Confusing, since an official "Themes II" album already existed in France and Belgium since 1995. The official "Themes II" album however contains no unreleased tracks. This bootleg does. The most interesting bit was always the excerpt from a preview version of the "Blade Runner" movie, which had the "Love Theme" scene with Harrison Ford and Sean Young set to completely different music by Vangelis. On the CD you can hear dialogue and sound effects play over the music, but the recording was unique. The release of the "Blade Runner Trilogy" CD however in 2007 made this track quite redundant, as it appeared on disk 2 titled "Desolation Path". Other interesting tracks on the "Themes 2" bootleg are the end titles from the "The Plague" ("La Peste") movie (sadly in mono), and edited (by the bootleggers) musical excerpts from the "Bitter Moon" and "Francesco" sound, where recordings for both seem taken from the laserdisc releases of the movies.

Event of Excellence

A bootleg by the famous Japanese bootleg label "Highland", widely distributed in 1999. It offers a recording of Vangelis' free outdoor concert in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, back in the summer of 1991. The audio was taken from the TV broadcast of the event, but the sound quality is abominable, with unnecessary noise and even digital drop outs. It also suffers from the few short interruptions the live broadcast had due to technical problems.
The graphics used in the booklet at not from Eureka but from the earlier Athens' "Song for Athens" concert, which promoted Greece's bid to host the 1996 Summer Olympic Games. The music of the event wasn't very interesting to begin with: Most tracks where edits from the album versions, rather than new performances. Vangelis played along with these trakcs, but those added parts were almost completely inaudible on TV. The closing song was a special version of Hymn that later appeared in a slightly different mix and edit on the Portraits compilation albums. The only rarity left on this bootleg is the short opening tune of the event.

Another Page of Life

In 1998 the Japanese progressive rock bootlegging specialists of the underground "Hightland" label released "Another Page Of life". This time they combined the recordings of the first unreleased version of Page of Life with the 1986 demo recordings by Jon and Vangelis. The early version of Page of Life had leaked in the shape of a cassette, and contained some tracks that never appeared on the final album. The 1986 demo tapes were random recordings by Jon & Vangelis which simply never materialized into a release. In face, two of those tracks were later re-recorded by Anderson and released as a solo artist, but a leaked tape recording of those Jon & Vangelis tracks shows where they originated.

There's some noise on this CD, the higher part of the sound spectrum is pretty much absent, but admittedly these are the best quality versions of this music available.

Much of the Page Of Life music has in fact been released in 1998 Omtown edition of Page of Life, but it was edited slightly different there. The one thing truly missing from the Omtown version was the instrumental intro to "Change we Must", here included as "Open Up".

Historically, the 1986 demo recordings have no real connection with Page of Life, but it makes sense to sell them along with the other rare Jon & Vangelis tracks from that era.

Sensitivity plus "Alpha"

The third Vangelis related bootleg, by the Japanese "Highland records" label features an audience recording of the concert Vangelis performed in Paris in 1978. The bootleg does not feature the entire recording: The bootleggers edited it down to make the results fit on only one CD. The quality of the recording is comparable to the tapes that were traded amongst fans in the '80s and early '90s. The bootleg was quite widely distributed in Japan. From the outside it's not very clear that this is in fact a low quality bootleg, instead of a regular album. Be warned!

Cavafy (Storm label)

The famous Russian "Storm" label is big on the Russian black market label, mostly counterfeiting normal albums. It seems unlikely that they would actually release a bootleg as specifically targeted at completist fans as this one is, so the name of the label was probably falsely used by others for this production.

This pressed CD contains the never released music from the 1996 Greek movie "Kavafis". The sound has simply been taken straight from the film, so you hear monologues and some dialogues over it. It was often claimed that voices were removed from the recordings, but in most cases the music simply fades out where too much dialogue was mixed in the film's soundtrack. At other points, several such cues were edited together to suggest it continues, tampering in fact with Vangelis' compositions.

The sound quality of the CD is certainly very good. The sound is clear, it has lots of high tones, hardly any noise with also no sign of typical noise removal processing, so the source must have been very good. Certainly better than the Hifi stereo VHS tapes that were traded around at the time. They must have had better sources.

The CD doesn't contain all cues from the film, but there is a bonus track to make up for this, in the form of the "Night of Poetry" concert's reading of a poem by Kavafis. This music that Vangelis played for this poem seems thematically linked to the film, even though this concert took place 5 years before the release of the film. Intriguing. The sound quality of this track as well is surprisingly good.

Sex Power / Fais Que Ton Reve Soit Plus Long Que La Nuit

A bootleg often confused for a legit release, mostly because of its wide distribution in the west European CD scene is this bootleg of the rare Sex Power LP, coupled with the (less) rare Fais Que Ton Reve Soit Plus Long Que La Nuit LP, and confusingly (because not properly listed on the artwork) a couple from Vangelis' early '60s days in Greece with The Forminx.

Counterfeit albums

Counterfeit albums are CDs that are reproductions of legal CDs. They do not provide any unreleased material for fans, but try to cash in on the success of official releases. Those cheap carbon copies sometimes intruded into legitimate CD stores, but often were sold on markets, in the streets, etc.

East European countries used to almost exclusively sell counterfeit releases, initially because their Warshaw Pact economies didn't protect the original copyrights of these albums. Later because the originals were too expensive, or simply because those big counterfeiting channels existed and didn't immediately stop existing just because the official versions came into their reach.

Since most counterfeit CDs look almost exactly like their official counterparts, and were sold pretty much "under the radar", this site won't be listing such releases, with only a few exceptions:

Mythodea

One notable counterfeit release however was a Mythodea CD, which reached the illegal Russian markets before it was properly released in the west. Some of these fake copies made their way to European and American markets, filling the void where an audience didn't like to wait too much for the official release.

The recording was probably copied from the promotional CDs that Sony supplied in a cardboard sleeve even before the concert performance in Athens, many months before the proper album release. Whether this is a proper counterfeit CD is debatable, since the Russians replaced the artwork by something of their own design, but it was made to look like an official release as much as possible.

"The Dragon" (and others) from Hungary

The banned "The Dragon" album was illegally released on CD in Hungary, in the early years of the new millennium. Along with this CD they released other Vangelis albums like "666" (credited to "Vangelis featuring Aphrodite's Child" and cut a little short to make it fit on one CD), "Earth" and "Apocalypse des Animaux". All were given new or at least revised artwork. None of course were properly licensed.

mp3 CD-ROMs

Around the turn of the millennium, when mp3s became popular but could not be purchased legally, an underground scene temporarily flourished, which sold CD-ROMs with large collections of mp3 files. Although the professionally produced CDs were mostly created and sold in east European countries, some of these CDs were smuggled out and sold on markets and on the streets also in western countries.

Some of these CDs were various artist compilations containing mp3 folders for one or more Vangelis albums. Sometimes they focussed on Vangelis' music exclusively, compiling many of Vangelis' albums, or even pretending to have the entire Vangelis catalog. Some included rips from bootleg CDs along the official albums.