Those Russian twofers

[Johnny E]

I was going to bid on a russian reissue CD of the George Harrison records "Dark Horse" & "33 & 1/3". I've seen a number of this type of reissues on ebay. I think they're Russian. Does anybody know about these? Are they good sounding reissues? What are they? What's up?

Edited October 25, 2005 by Johnny E

[John L]

I don't know anything about the George Harrison releases. But a good share of the CDs released in Russia are pirated. There are a number of other CDs that are released at a budget price only for the domestic market with the understanding that they will not be sold or re-sold anywhere else.

Like many other "emerging market" countries, the Russia CD market is a case of the bad weeding out the good. Because pirating is so prevalent, there is not much of a market for legitimate CDs. There are few profits to be had.

Some of the pirated Russian CDs have very bad sound quality. So be careful.

[Rooster_Ties]

I've seen a number of these on eBay before, and they all looked like pirate issues to me. Nearly all of George's catalog has been recently reissued on CD (often with a bonus track or two), so there's no reason to be buying these cheap knock-offs.

[Claude]

I'm sure the Beatles maniacs at http://www.stevehoffman.com/forum will know.

Edited October 26, 2005 by Claude