Yeah well... This concert from Allan's 1984 trip to Japan has been on YouTube for a while so it's not new material. And while it's nice that Allan's family might see some backside money for it, the original circumstances were a bit dubious.
In classic Allan style, he had agreed to let the concert be filmed and probably accepted at least some of the money up front. Although I don't know the exact details, I presume that he also signed a contract when presented with that envelope of cash. The story is,
he understood that he had the right of approval, but when he tried to exercise that right and say DO NOT RELEASE THIS the producers went ahead and put it out it anyway. It's possible he never made any money from the
sales of this almost bootleg, but I'm quite sure he got paid at least something up front so it was never "nothing". Just next to nothing.
And so our favorite genius guitarist suffered from this "unauthorized" release which he deemed to be inferior, even to the point of NOT signing it for people who presented it to him seeking an autograph.
All that said, Chad and I were proud to have been a part of Allan's first trip to Japan and we think there are some good and unique musical moments on the recording. Allan however could only concentrate on the musical errors (most of which we didn't hear) and that often ruined an entire show for him.
So there you have it. As a technical detail, on that tour I was playing my 3rd Series II, built in '82 as a graphite-necked fretted 5-string. I later had the fingerboard redone as a fretless bass and it now serves a backup to my main fretless.
Cheers everybody,
Jimmy J
