Here we are on a fan forum openly discussing piracy ( or possibly privateering
! )
I managed to get hold of the demos in an independent record shop in the town where I work ( as the town where I live doesn't have one! ) .
The plastic sleeve the shop had them in indicated a total run of 1000 copies.
Because I'm old and sad, I still have 2 hi-fi separate stack systems in the house & fortunately both still have their turntables, so I have had no problem playing the 45rpm singles.
A couple of observations - and this of course is just my own opinion:
For the average vinyl single or LP, unless you are a serious audiophile most middle of the range turntables will do the job, and let's be honest, how many of us are going to be giving up our very convinient & high quality CD players and rebuilding a collection of vinyl. I found playing the singles quite inconvenient as they needed a wipe with a record cleaning brush before playing and then I had to very careful not to knock the desk where the turntable is mounted (I'd forgotten how easy it was to make a record "jump" ! )
The demos themselves:
Although I was prepared for a rougher version of the songs, I was quite surprised at how "un-developed" the electric guitar fills & solos were in Sultans & Waterline. Mark obviously put a lot of time into polishing these 2 tunes up before recording them for the album. On the other hand, Wild West End & Water of love which both feature the National were much more like the album versions (although still rougher and with a few different lyrics) .
To be honest, they won't be getting a lot of play on my turntable, but I'm glad to have that bit of "history" in my collection.
