Hard to believe...

[Carloscda]

Watching Rock Fest, Metal Mania on VH1 Classic all these bands have live concert footage, majority now even full concerts from back then.

Hard to believe all we have is the 3 Oakland songs & the Your No Good/Dance the night away/Bottoms Up performance. Big as VH is no Proshot full concerts exists unless Ed has them all locked up in the "Vault"?!

Yes I know about Largo, Sao Paulo, Brazil & US Fest...

[Terry]

There are versions of the Hide Your Sheep Largo show out there that have been cleaned-up and restored by bootleggers that look and sound nearly as good as a professionally restored version possibly could.

The 1983 South American stuff looks a bit raw by comparison, mostly because it was shot on videotape and any copy you get your hands on tends to be an umpteen millionth generation copy of a vhs recording.

I've seen some decent versions of the US Fest performance floating out there.

The 1981 Oakland stuff and the 1979 Kirshner stuff you mentioned was all shot on film, which tends to clean up a little better than videotape in terms of restoration.

I can't imagine as to why none of that stuff has seen an official release yet. I suspect perhaps Van Halen didn't retain exclusive rights to all that footage in a manner where they can unilaterally release it for profit without cutting in Kirshner's estate or Warner Brothers for a slice.

But who the fuck knows? If it is legal issues of ownership, or establishing ownership, that has prevented the footage from getting a professional restoration and release then this would be to a degree understandable. If it is a case of Eddie just sitting on the footage and not releasing it for no other reason than that he can, well, it wouldn't exactly be the first dickhead move Eddie has made in the last 20 years...would it?