I have a copy of the German made Mono-Tone pressing of this album . I absolutely love this band but quality of the recording is pretty bad, so bad that it almost hurts to listen to it at any decent volume . It's still a great album to own .

Does anyone know if there's a difference between this and the Victory issue?

Tracks 1-3 have been cut from the end and towards the end of B2 there's a mishmash of two separate parts of the song playing simultaneously, miscut?

Very well put below. However this record is a masterpiece. I have an identical copy to the one described on this page but mine says "made in france", not in Italy. Regardless, it sounds dirty and good.

is it worth getting this if I already have Heavier Than a Death in the Family?

This version is very similar to the Victory bootleg (I have both). The only difference with this one is that it seems to have some slight fades in and out of some of the tracks.

To me yes, '77 live is the real thing. I'm referring to the Victory bootleg, not this one, chances are they are identical. HTADITF lacks "Distant Memory" and "The Last One" so the set is incomplete. I believe other tracks were performed at that show but didn't made it on the original CD. As a relatively nice extra that one has "Field Of Artficial Flowers" ('73?) under a different name, but that's very distorted stuff.

Since I've stumbled upon Mizutani and his beast, Les Rallizes Dénudés, I've got hold of plenty of bootleg recordings readily available on P2P, but except from some 80-81 sbd recordings that sounded pretty good, most of them are heavily messed up and does not provide a true image of what they did on stage back then. But '77 live is almost a masterpiece, and it sounds quite faithful. There are errors, channels going off here and there, a bit of noise and a few passages of terrible digital distorion, I think the mastering had been pushed too much. But put that a side and roll off some trebles on your amp. Imagine to be 40 years ago, Japan, a dark hall, a flashing strobe light, a few buzzing guyatone amps and 4 obscure guys ready to tear down the house.The concert is a real sonic assault with the band in their finest and psychedelic form. Lift off is incredibly gentle with "Enter The Mirror" in a very languid rendition, Hiroshi keeps up a wonderful seesaw bass melody. "Night of the assassins" pushes tempo up and everything heats up, til "Flames of ice" builds up in a mess of feedback. Then as a breather another ballad with same previous formula, being one of the best "Distant Memory" performances ever heard (being a ballad it's indeed difficult to fit on a noise-rock session, but they got it right this time). "Deeper than night" is the winner, a beautiful strung out and trippy version, in which even tough Takashi outrages his guitar and amp, the rest of the band keeps the rhythm rolling flawlessly and nonchalant, without interfering or adding useless additional dBAs. They keep it for the next one "The night harvesters" the wildest track of the set, a wall of scream and noise with great drumming from Toshiro and pounding supporting Guitar by Takeshi, while Mizutani is busy deafening the audience. And as per tradition, closing with 20 minutes of "The Last One" in a very heavy rendition, in which heavy drumming is on spot, desperately breaking through a massive wall of noise.That's it. I believe there were a couple of other tracks such as "Field of artificial flowers" and "Romance of black grief" which are found as audience recordings. If those were recorded from the board and purposedly omitted from the Rivista's 1991 CD, that would have been a crime. Anyway, 1 hour and half of japanese psych-noise, and maybe one of the earlies before Fushitsusha &co., mixed with Velvet Underground and melancholic folk, this is an essential listening.This Victory reissue sounds good, i'd say same as the CD. I thought vinyl would have suffered to render such material but goes thru quite happily, so it's worth its fairly honest retail price (25€).