IN SEARCH OF THE HEROINE

This concert was taped before a live audience for radio broadcast in New York's Ultrasonic Studio in Hempstead NJ on 20 Feb 1974. The concert is plagued with almost every kind of PA trouble you can imagine, including abandoning an attempt to play "Hero and Heroine" because John Hawken's mellotron packs up. Instead after a track labelled "Talk", which is classic Dave Cousins audience chat whilst they try to get the Mellotron working again, they play an extended version of "Why" which is in fact the full version of the song "Why And Wherefore". The song was broken up and appeared out of order on two single B-sides: "Why" on the B-side of "Hero And Heroine" and "And Wherefore" on the B-side of "Shine On Silver Sun". The full version also features a middle section with two bridging verses, and the full studio version of this otherwise unreleased song was rescued for Halcyon Days UK version.

As often the case with bootlegs, the booklet pictures are gloriously anachronistic, the front cover being from a 1972 concert in Germany, where DC played "Higher Germanie", hence the banjo, with other shots taken from the same show.

as far as I know, there is only one release of this particular show, recorded at Ultrasonic Studios in New York City on 20th Feb 1974 for WLIR Radio, with the still relatively new Hero And Heroine line up. The bootleg Prince And Princess purports to feature this show, but it doesn't - it's the 1974 BBC Live In Concert show, no doubt lifted from BBC Transcription discs or the Heroes Are Forever disc 2. It certainly deserves to be wideky heard. I have recently acquired a similar Ultrasonic show bootleg featuring Lindisfarne in 1972, so there may be other Ultrasonic fans out there.