Buried Treasure: The Saw Doctors - New Year's Day (2005)

The Saw Doctors live performance at the Black Box in Galway, Ireland on New Year's Day 2005 was released as a limited edition CD with a run of only one thousand autographed copies. All proceeds from the sale of the disc went to the Galway Sri Lanka Relief Fund to aid tsunami victims.

When orders for New Year's Day exceeded the number made available by the original pressing Leo Moran, one of the band's founding members and primary lead singer, wondered how The Docs could keep their promise to fans that their purchases would still be part of a limited run while trying to fill all of the excess orders. The answer was to issue another thousand discs with brand new cover art, shown here, and new liner notes written by Moran. This would preserve the exclusivity of the original thousand and keep the remaining customers happy.

After copies of the first thousand sold out the band gave the fund a check for 15,000 euros.

New Year's Day is an excellent live disc, more enjoyable than 2004's Live In Galway, the band's first live CD, because the newer album is a better recording with a much cleaner mix. The arrangements and vocals are not as washed out as they are on its predecessor. There is some duplication in the set list but Moran said in his liner notes that emphasis was given to those songs not on Galway.

This rare concert album will appeal mostly to people who have had a long time appreciation of The Saw Doctors but newbies may find some satisfaction listening to this cool band perform at the top of their game.

You can still purchase the entire album on mp3 through Amazon.