Soundheads out there will likely know that Loop has been reissuing their recorded output over the last year or so. Initially slept on, these records are now considered classics of guitar-rock brain-oozing psych, and it's a wonderful thing to finally see Robert Hampson discussing the band after some 20 years of studiously ignoring the subject and focusing on his later Main project.
Now Main is defunct too, and Hampson is actually putting out albums under his own name. The Loop reissues have generously included bonus discs of Peel Sessions, demos, and comp appearances. With the exception of recordings now too damaged to remaster, it seems almost everything that Loop ever released is seeing the light of day. Everything, that is, with one noteable exception...
The history of this Loop live bootleg is largely unknown. Released in 1992, originally in both the double-LP format and as a single CD, this Italian bootleg was famously limited to 1000 copies; the songs were late-period Loop, with many tracks off their last record "A Gilded Eternity". I bought mine not long thereafter at an HMV of all places, and yes, it was expensive even at the time.
According to the Loop discography at glassdarkly -
Appears to be the complete concert from which "Got To Get It Over (Live)" from Dual was extracted. Oddly enough, the sound on this is vastly superior to the version from DUAL (provided that they are, in fact, from the same show). As a matter of opinion, these live versions are given a much more muscular workout than the studio versions, at least as far as the tracks from A GILDED ETERNITY are concerned. "Mother Sky" is a cover of a song by Can.
A 12" Loop EP came out around 1991 consisting of three tracks and entitled "Prisma Uber Europa"; interestingly enough, these three tracks have in fact been reissued on the bonus discs for Loop's "The World In Your Eyes" collection. Now, two of those three tracks - "Afterglow" and "Got To Get It Over" - are the same live versions that appear on "Edizione Limitata di 1000".
Further, that same live version of "Got To Get It Over" also appears on "Dual", which is an official release (although not sanctioned by the band). Again, information at glassdarkly lists this recording as dating from Loop's 1990 tour of the US (opening for The Cult, I believe). So it would seem that the master for all these live recordings may well have been in the possession of the band, at least at one time.
Still, as the write-up quoted above suggests, the sound on the Italian bootleg is superior to that on the official comp album. So who knows? The whys and wherefores aside, I give you now that rarest and most-sought-after Loop prize, a nice 320 rip of the original CD bootleg, the full-length "Edizione Limitata di 1000" --
Loop - Edizione Limitata di 1000 (320)
***ADDENUDUM (Aug. 25/09): I bought the flabbergastingly awesome three-disc remastered edition of the Loop compilation "The World In Your Eyes" yesterday, and the notes for those aforementioned three live tracks list their recording location as, "God only knows" -- which pretty strongly suggests to me at least that Loop must not have recorded the songs in the first place!***
