Eric Bogle - Autogram Bootlegs, Germany, 1970s (ALLP-220 & 253)

Eric Bogle, Autogram Vinyl bootlegs (recorded in mid-1970s, released early 1980s)

Before Scottish/Australian singer-songwriter Eric Bogle became famous (mostly through other artists covering his powerful anti-war songs like "No Man's Land" aka "Green Fields of France" or "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda") and landed a recording deal with a larger label, Eric played several folk festivals in Germany.

During one of these stints, Eric met Willy Schwenken of Folkshop, Nottuln, Germany, and was obviously persuaded to allow Willy Schwenken to release some of his live recordings (from two concerts in February 1977) as "Eric Bogle: Live In Person" (1977) on Schwenken's Autogram Records.

In addition to these, in February and May of 1977, Eric also recorded some songs for Schwenken, possibly for demo/promotional purposes. In the early 1980s, after Eric had been signed by Larrikin Records, Australia, and had become quite well-known as a songwriter, Schwenken obviously decided to "milk"  Eric's sudden popularity by re-releasing "Eric Bogle: Live In Person" (1977) and two unauthorised follow-up albums (bootlegs)("Down Under" and "Pure") comprised of the aforementioned "demos" and some left-over tracks from the 1977 live recordings.

Realising that the two unauthorised follow-up albums would never be released on CD, I decided to transfer my vinyl copies for archival/research purposes. Unfortunately, both records, after more than 25 years were no longer in mint (though definitely in VG-VG+) condition and just a few minutes too long to both fit onto one CD. So you will have to burn them as two separate CDs.  

I have also included some scans with excerpts from the original LP covers and inserts (song lyrics and comments -- not always correct -- by Willy Schwenken).

I do not quite agree with Eric who, on his website, lists these as "Curiosities" and states:
"Eric Bogle - Live in Person (L.P.)
Eric Bogle - Down Under (L.P.)
Eric Bogle - Pure (L.P.)
These were 3 LP's that were recorded during my first tour of Germany in 1976 [sic -- albums state Feb and May 1977]. Only the first one on the list was authorised, the other two are bootleg. Some of the songs were recorded "live", the rest are obviously quite dead. If you ever come across a copy of any of these L.P.s, melt it down and fashion an ashtray out of it."

While the demo "studio" recordings are certainly less interesting than the live ones (and rather poorly recorded at that), they nevertheless
contain quite a few rather decent (or even great) Eric Bogle songs (like "Simple Man's Love Song", the rather funny "Ice Queen", and topical songs like "Belfast Song (The Hero's Return)", another version of "No Man's Land", or "For King And Country", plus songs by other writers, like the old Carter Family favorite "Little Darling, Pal of Mine" (erroneously attributed to Eric Bogle).

Lineage: Original vinyl bootlegs->Sony Soundforge->Traders Little Helper (Flac level 8, align on sector boundaries)->originally shared/torrented in November 2008.



"Down Under" (ALLP-220)
Demo "studio" recordings; all songs believed to have been written by Eric Bogle, unless otherwise noted:

02a_01 Shining River                     
02a_02 Poor Wee Billy McMahon
02a_03 She'll Be Right
02a_04 For King And Country
02a_05 No Man's Land
02b_01 Homeless Man (Harry Robertson)
02b_02 Wee Pot Stove (Harry Robertson)
02b_03 Queensland Whalers (Harry Robertson)
02b_04 Owd Zither (Colin Dryden)
02b_05 Island In The River (Dorothy Hewitt)
02b_06 Death Of Ben Hall (trad.)

"Pure" (ALLP-253)
Demo "studio" recordings (unless otherwise noted); all songs believed to have been written by Eric Bogle, unless otherwise noted:

03a_01 Seasons
03a_02 Simple Man's Love Song
03a_03 Leavin' In The Morning
03a_04 Little Fishy
03a_05 Ice Queen
03a_06 Little Darling, Pal of Mine (A. P. Carter;
listed as "My Little Darling" and attributed to Eric Bogle) (Live, Feb 1977)

03b_01 Sandy Is A Soldier
03b_02 Why Should I Care?
03b_03 Suffer The Children
03b_04 Whisky-Wine
03b_05 I Hate Wogs (Live, Feb 1977)
03b_06 Belfast Song (The Hero's Return) (Live, Feb 1977)

Transferred and annotated by fredatwork/fredgermany, Nov 2008 as part of an archival project for research purposes only.

TECHNICAL NOTES: 
This is uploaded as a multi-part rar-file - to extract and combine parts, you'll need a program like WinRar or WinZip.

Once extracted/combined, you can verify file integrity with enclosed md5- or ffp-file and convert the FLAC-files to wav-files (for burning as audio CDs) with software like Trader's Little Helper or other tools for your specific OS.

DOWNLOAD
PART 1 (95 MB)
PART 2 (95 MB)
PART 3 (95 MB)
PART 4 (95 MB)
PART 5 (56 MB) 

SUPPORT ERIC BOGLE BY PURCHASING HIS OFFICIAL RECORDINGS.