The project was born when Alex Orbison, Roy's Boys president and the late legend's son, found a box of source tapes in a vault while also searching for bonus material for a deluxe edition of 1989's Mystery Girl, Orbison's last album. "I just started to sit and watch through all this stuff with a pen and paper, and just as a Roy Orbison fan I thought, 'Man, this is so cool,'" recalls Orbison, who was 12 years old when the show was held. "Any little scrap or piece that you find just makes the hair on my neck stand up on end. It was such a special night that to have anything that was different, and the fact it was good, made it even better."

The Black & White Night show was a pivotal event during Roy Orbison's late '80s comeback. Preceding his involvement with the all-star Traveling Wilburys band (Orbison, George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne), the show put a spotlight on Orbison's classic hits with help from Elvis Presley's TCB Band and guests Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Bonnie Raitt, k.d. Lang, Tom Waits, Jackson Browne, J.D. Souther and Steven Soles. The concert premiered the following Jan. 3 on Cinemax and was released 11 months later on album and home video. The concert is often regarded as one of the best rock shows in history.

"My dad always wanted a definitive live concert," Alex Orbison says. "He recorded a lot of live shows. None of them came out they way they wanted to. One of the distinguishing things about this for me and my brothers when we opened up the tapes is it had this jam band quality. It had this liveliness because of the guitar battles -- Bruce Springsteen, who is a phenomenal guitar player, has this interaction with James Burton and there's a lot going on between all the players that was so great." That realization inspired the younger Orbison -- who directed and co-edited the new version of the show -- to do more than just spruce it up for re-release.

"We wanted to let it rip a little more," he says. "When it was played on cable television, you got a lot of the sound of my dad and violins and backing vocals, but the band wasn't as strong. So we wanted to bring that back into this. It really sounds like you're in the front row and these guys are just ripping away. For me that means a lot."

The Black & White Night 30 package also includes a 33-minute documentary featuring never-before-seen interviews with many of the guests, as well as a montage of photos and memorabilia from the show. Roy Orbison Jr. wrote liner notes for the package. Black & White Night 30 will also be airing as a special on PBS.

Roy's Boys has several other Orbison projects on the runway. Bruce Evans and Raynold Gideon (Stand By Me, Starman) have finished a script for a biopic that's currently being shopped around Hollywood, while Alex Orbison is directing a documentary about his father's life from 1978-1988 that should be out this fall, along with a coffee table book. Another musical project is in the offing, too, but Orbison will say little about it other than it involves some new recording that's been done in Nashville and overseas and could be out this fall, too.

Ok as a 63 year old, a simple question. Are the extended tracks on the cd or DVD or do you have to download them.

I wonder if the aforementioned deluxe edition of Mystery Girl is the 2014 version or yet another expanded release.



https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006T0V3WO/?tag=imwan-20