Is there an animals soundboard?

Unfortunately, to the best of my experience, there are no Animals soundboards out there (yet!)

I collected Floyd live tapes extensively between 1980-1995, at one point I had close to 300 different shows in my collection although some of them might have been lost by now! At one time, I did have tapes of all the Animals tour shows that were known to exist at the time (not the whole tour, but most of the shows).

Anyway, here's what I can add from my collecting experience. I don't know what's out there on Kazaa or whatever now, because I stopped collecting years ago- but I did collect some tapes right from the guys who originally taped the shows to begin, and I think the passage of time can allow me now to tell some tales.

Compared to other bands, true Floyd soundboards, especially from their "classic" period are really scant. However, due to the excellent sound quality of their systems, and the hard work of the taping elite, there are of course some excellent recordings out there.

The Oakland 77 show, sometimes thought to be a soundboard, was recorded by a guy sitting in the front rows with the absolute best, state of the art live recording equipment you could buy at the time- Sennheiser mikes, Nakamichi recorder, the whole deal. In one of those most remarkable examples of bootlegging luck it also turned out to be the Careful With That Axe Eugene show.

The Montreal 77 show, as somebody mentioned earlier, is out there in various formats- for years all we had was a pretty mediocre tape, until the really good one that made it on to CD surfaced in the early 1990's. I am not sure why it took that long, excepting that from what I was told, the taper was not really a big Floyd collector per se, just a really good taper who taped a lot of shows in Canada.

Other good 77 tapes from my memory, included the Vienna show- this one I am pretty sure I've lost though, dammit!- and the Zurich show- this last was a great recording of a very indifferently played show.

Now, I remember reading in a couple of places (i.e fanzines) that the Floyd recorded all their shows in 1977, not for releasing a live album per se but for practice or checking the sound equipment or some such reason. I also read an interview online with one of the backing singers from the 73-75 shows, who said that the Floyds gave the girls tapes of the night's shows on a routine basis- but they just threw them away!