Bootleg Nation

Buick6

too punk to drunk
I've always loved live bootlegs, and while not as fanatical as some, I have spent reasonable money on stuff - maybe 40 bucks for the 'Smile' bootleg, the Dylan 'Live66 Royal Albert Hall' before it got an 'official' release and some Stones live boots from the early 70s and of course tonnes of Velvet Underground ones..I do understand CLinton Heylin wrote a pretty good book on the who bootleg phenom about 10 years ago...

The thing I love about bootlegs is their obvious rawness, their 'time warping' feel and of course the immediacy and yet distance of the live 'sound' untampered with.

ANYWAY SoulSeek has been like Manna from Cyberspace for me in regards to bootlegs, and recently I found some prime-period My Bloody valentine boots from 'Isn't anything' and 'Loveless' related tours. They sound great - fucked up, murky and totally psychadelic and experimental, up there with my Les Raillizes Denudes boots. totally sick! :cool:
 

Woebot

Well-known member
Some bootlegs are good. Obviously the Smile boots are great! (I have two of them!)

Also I used to have an amazing MC5 bootleg, the appalingly sound recording on which made the record even more thrilling. Opened with an incredibly rocky version of Back in the USA (If memory serves)

There are also lots of great VU boots, which really serve a purpose as their live shows were often radically different, featuring crazed groovy "jams" etc

But i wonder two things.

Firstly if the bootleg ceased to be important around 1977 when Punk imploded the whole Aura of the performer (and in doing so destroyed some of the magic that actually WAS there). The idea that musicians were gods overflowing with divine inspiration which had to be savoured and preserved must have died about then.

If electronic music (and in turn the development of the art of the studio) didnt problematise the idea of the original performance. In other words, there became so many "original performances" (unlike the two takes a band might perform of a number, you'll have with dubbing an infinite number of mixes) that it effectively killed the charm of alternate takes. It certainly must have contributed to the lack of appeal of live recordings by electronic acts. I mean, how rare is the live LP by the electronic artist (only Kraftwerk's recent gambit springs to mind)

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Also I suspect the form of "mixes" (ie Derrick May live at the Amsterdam Terrordrome 1992 recorded off the rig) or even that of mixes downloadable off the Internet (about time someone wrote something about this phenomenon) have engulfed/replaced the old bootleg culture?
 

labrat

hot on the heels of love
my mate used to have a really early New Order bootleg where some wag in the crowd (during a particularly morose passage) shouted "lets go disco Barney!!!"













some years later we realised he must have heard.
 

Buick6

too punk to drunk
Rare DJ mixes off the net would be an interesting evolution of the 'bootleg' problem is the DJ mixes always come out as naff 'Ibiza.Ministry if Sound' tapes...I remember the United DJs of America series of the mid 90s to be pretty seminal for killer DJ mixes..

There's a fantastic Kenny Dixon Jr set you might find on SOulSeek featuring a guy from the Last Poets thats is a pretty good 'modern day' bootleg!
 

petergunn

plywood violin
WOEBOT said:
Firstly if the bootleg ceased to be important around 1977 when Punk imploded the whole Aura of the performer (and in doing so destroyed some of the magic that actually WAS there).


very debatable point, since the best punk record that came out WAS a bootleg...

anyone?

anyone?


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spunk- the sex pistols

a way better record than Nevermind the Bollocks and worth a fair chunk o change if you can find it in it's original form... i got into bootlegs collecting sex pistols ones and i have a fair amount. sadly very few of them are original 77-78 pressings, but those are basically in the hands of collectors at this point.

the first clash guy stevens demos only came out on bootleg, as did the "time's up" LP by the buzzcoclks... and let's not even got started on the Misfits... so, there were alot of punk bootlegs, i would actually put the late 70's as the peak of bootlegging, rather then the decline.

some of my fav vinyl bootlegs i own are:

liver than you'll ever be- the rolling stones ...basically a better version of get yer ya yas out, one of the first big bootlegs, probably sold 100,000 easy, as you see it all over, was a west coasr pressing i think, as you see them more there.

steralin'- dylan -another west coast one i think and one of the first dylan bootlegs, a mix of early trad. folk stuff and stuff from 1965...

beatles- let it be original mix, basically the album without phil specter strings and slightly dif. song selection...

sweet sister ray- VU a 2 record set consisting only of 2 versions of Sister Ray and 2 versions of Sweet Sister Ray... i am debating burning this and selling it...
 
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