[Nupe The Ripper] Tuesday, September 25, 2012 2:26:28 PM
I wrote a lenghty post but then the bloody thing had me automatically logged out because of inactivity and I lost it.
Anyway, this show won't be released officially because it was not professionally recorded. The audio and video are extremely good considering the timeframe but it's also very obscured with hands and heads.
A more likely candidate for an official DVD would be the Irvine Meadows show from July 1991 (professionally recorded and partly broadcast by ABC) that also includes two songs not found on the usual Painkiller setlist: Turbo Lover and Diamonds & Rust (which hadn't been performed after 1983). Other proshots from the main Painkiller tour include Detroit 1990 (although given that it was recorded by a fan from the hotel's TV live feed, there might not be any master tapes) and Rock in Rio 1991 (Globo TV is known to have the master tapes in it's possession: Grinder is available on the DVD for the British Steel DVD released in 2001). Zagreb 1991 is unlikely as it was shot just a month before the Croatian war broke out, so chances are that it's permanently lost (only a short version is in circulation).
We've had a lot of DVD's from various tours but this still seems like one key tour in Priest history that has not yet been represented in form of DVD. While the Operation Rock N' Roll Tour shows were short on the setlist, the tremendously powerful live sound they had on this last stretch of the Painkiller tour was just bone crushing. One of the shows that clearly stands out on this leg was the Middletown 08.16 show which still surprises me that it hasn't come out on DVD, despite many fans' praises and claims of it being the best Painkiller Tour show. If Priest are reading this we could really go with one of these, with an all-teeth-bared style Priest.
