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May 13, 2025 Web Exclusive By Frank Valish

It’s a blessing that a band with such a relatively short career (and terribly tragic ending) has an official live album to its catalog of recordings. Initially released on CD in 2000, Bootleg Detroit makes its vinyl debut here for Record Store Day 2025, remastered and pressed on translucent milky-clear vinyl.

Sourced from an audience recording and mastered by frontman Mark Sandman shortly before his untimely death of a heart attack onstage in 1999, Bootleg Detroit is 12 songs of the best prime-era Morphine had to offer, on tour in early 1994. The band was fresh off its breakthrough album, Cure for Pain, which was released the prior fall, and most of the set here is comprised of songs from that album. Seven of Cure for Pain’s 13 songs are represented here, along with two from the band’s debut, Good, and a couple extras.

The sound quality of these performances, being an audience recording, has been lamented in the past, but to this reviewer’s ears, it isn’t band. Obviously, this is not a studio recording, but the sound of the band is clear, and the audience reaction to the songs provides a real aspect to the proceedings; this not some sanitized product for mass consumption.

Side 1 finds Morphine visiting “Mary” (as in “Mary Won’t You Call My Name?”), “Candy,” “Sheila,” and “Claire.” The side ends with “My Brain,” Sandman spoken-word riffing on how his “brain is out of tune” over some avant sax skronk. Side 2 brings some of Cure for Pain’s best songs: “Head With Wings,” “Thursday,” and the title track, along with “You Speak My Language” and “You Look Like Rain” from Good. And it all ends with “Buena,” another song from the album they were supporting on this tour.

Bootleg Detroit is an incredibly vibrant documentation of live Morphine in its prime. It shouldn’t be missed. (www.rhino.com)

Author rating: 7/10