Rattle Your Boots

Back on my bootleg bullshit. I posted one earlier this year when I added another live Slayer boot to the collection, but I had the itch for more, so this is my first one for Megadeth.

I wasn't too impressed with the goofy looking cover art for this Megadeth bootleg, but since it was a very early live set for the band, I couldn't resist it. Recorded live in San Francisco on February 19th, 1984, so these are the very early years of the band. We are a full year out from the release of Megadeth's first album, and Mustaine is still cobbling together musicians trying to find a group that works... in fact, based on the time frame, I'm fairly certain that this live set is one of the five shows that had Kerry King on guitar before he went back to focus on Slayer full time.

The setlist had me excited to check out these songs but the sound is so rough at the beginning that I can't tell what is playing. The first song is Hook In Mouth, and I was curious if this was an early version of the song that ended up on the So Far, So Good album from '88, but the sound is so bad that I have no idea... same with the next song Burnt Offerings...it is just a blur of noise. Thankfully things clear up and sound much better by the time we hit Chosen Ones, and the rest of the album is a lot of fun to listen to. It is very raw and really captures the young thrash scene with Mustaine's over the top between song banter... and yes, he talks plenty of shit on Metallica. Overall, this record is very raw and what I would expect from a live bootleg from this time period.

Record Collecting Is My Business...

I've had Megadeth's Killing Is My Business on my Want List for a long time. Years ago, I set my eBay profile to alert me whenever a copy became available. My email inbox saw countless notifications, and I ignored most of them. The record seemed to show up pretty regularly, so I figured there was no rush, and I kept putting off buying a copy. Then, at the start of last year, I posted my Top 10 Wants In 2016 here on the blog. I thought that if I published it here, it would keep it at the forefront of my mind, and it would motivate me to finally cross it off my list. No dice. I didn't make anymore headway on it than years past.

I vowed that 2017 was going to be different. While I only crossed one record off my Top 10 Want List in 2016, I committed myself to doing better this year. With some cash in my Paypal account from recently selling off some records, I figured that it was time to finally make a move on the first Megadeth record.

One of the things that made an original pressing of Killing Is My Business so attractive, was that it is really the only place that you are going to get their cover version of These Boots. Seems that Lee Hazelwood wasn't too impressed with Mustaine's interpretation, and forbid them from ever releasing it again. Too bad...Megadeth's version is great.

I fucking love those green Combat labels. I want them all. When looking to buy a copy of Killing Is My Business, this was really the only way to go. Man, this thing is in amazing condition for a record that over 30 years old.

One of the reasons that I paid a bit more for my copy of this record was that it included the original merchandise order form. Gotta have it for the Metal history!

Mega-dystopia

Two bands from Thrash's Big Four have released new albums in 2016...Megadeth and Anthrax...and I've fought them for months. I carry a chip on my shoulder for both bands for one reason or another, and I was convinced that they were going to flaming balls of shit that I wouldn't waste my time on. Still, the Metal community seems to be impressed with both albums, and after reading positive review after positive review for both Anthrax and Megadeth, I broke down and downloaded a copy of each.

The Anthrax album turned out to be a great surprise, but I still had doubts about Megadeth.

I never bothered with the last two Megadeth albums, and the general consensus was that they weren't all that great. I just figured that there was a lot better stuff being released from more exciting bands, so why would I bother wasting my time with Megadeth. With the new album, Dystopia, I tried to remain positive, and after listening to the download on my iPod a couple of times, the best I could come up with was, "Well, it doesn't suck".

The jury is still out on how I feel about this album. At times, it seems like a nice throwback to Rust In Peace era Megadeth, yet this doesn't really excite me all that much. I'm not sure how often I'll reach for this record, but finding it at the local record store with a sale price tag of $11, I figured "What the hell?", and I grabbed a copy.