Black Sabbath November xx, 1989 Olympic Hall Moscow, Russia Headless In Russia Tradeable
2 DVDs Definitive Edition Professional Master NTSC 4:3
Unknown Yes Yes 1 1
DVD1: Afternoon Show
Intro
The Gates Of Hell
Headless Cross
Neon Knights
Children Of The Sea
Nicholls / Iommi introduction
Die Young, Apache [instrumental]
When Death Calls [cut]
War Pigs
MC (with interpreter)
Guitar intro -> Black Sabbath
Iron Man
Children Of The Grave
Heaven And Hell
Paranoid
Outro
DVD2: Evening Show
Intro-Ave Satani
The Gates Of Hell
Headless Cross
Neon Knights
Children Of The Sea
Iron Man
Children Of The Grave
MC
When Death Calls
War Pigs
Nicholls / Iommi instrumental
Die Young, Guitar Intro
Black Sabbath
Heaven And Hell
Paranoid
Outro
Black Sabbath performed 14 shows at Moscow's Olympski Hall from November 19th through the 28th. For the weekend shows, they would play both an afternoon and evening show! They also played an additional 12 shows in Leningrad through December 9th. These were the longest stints they'd played at a single venue since their early gigs at The Star Club in Hamburg!
With the obvious advantage of not having to break down their equipment every night, they decided to record some of these shows for a possible home video release. At least two shows were professionally recorded, although it is likely that more recording was done during their stay in Russia. Unexpected complications arose when they tried to recover their stock footage back from the Russian authorities. These delays and other related issues discouraged Sabbath from actually releasing this footage commercially at the time.
Two of these Moscow shows surfaced in 2002 on the bootleg DVD-R set HEADLESS IN RUSSIA. These are encoded with Dolby Digital 4.1 sound. Each DVD was mastered using MPEG-2 video streams at 4 mbps and MPEG 2.0 audio at 384 kbps, fitting each show easily on to a single layer DVD-R. The running time for the afternoon show is 85:38. The evening show clocks in at 86:14.
Like many other professional recordings that have recently surfaced from this era, these films are probably from Cozy Powell's private collection. Much of his estate was sold after his untimely death in 1996. Being that these were pro-shot, the filming contains an excellent multi-cam perspective of the shows. However, the picture quality does contain numerous flaws. White streaks mar these otherwise beautiful films. These may have been damaged while in storage. On the Afternoon Show disc, there also appears to be a brief accidental erasure that occurs at the beginning of "When Death Calls". There are two brief dropouts, each lasting no longer than 3-5 seconds.
The exact dates for these films are not yet known, but they are each labeled as 'Afternoon Show' and 'Evening Show', so it is assumed that they took place on the same day. In an interview with Pete Sarfas [Black Sabbath Appreciation Society Newsletter Volume 5 - 1990], Tony mentions that Sabbath played 2 shows a day only during the weekend gigs. So, this would narrow the possible dates for the HEADLESS IN RUSSIA videos to either November 19th (Sunday), November 25th (Saturday) or November 26th (Sunday).
AFTERNOON SHOW: Missing the "Ave Satani" introduction. Contains a unique live performance of the Hank Marvin & The Shadows instrumental "Apache" during the Afternoon Show! This is the only live version of this song currently in circulation. An aborted rehearsal take of the songs appears on the DEHUMANIZER REHEARSALS boot CD.
EVENING SHOW: This film contains the complete "Ave Satani" / "The Gates Of Hell" introduction. The set list is shifted around a bit, moving "Iron Man" and "Children Of The Grave" closer to the beginning of the show. "Die Young" is dropped back towards the end.
