(Now if I only still had my VCR hooked up...)
I read a piece recently in Maxim of all places about the underground culture of concert bootlegging and it’s new Renaissance with the advent of something called the internet. And as I sat there on the toilet, I remember thinking why would someone want to own every Led Zeppelin concert ever recorded? I wasn’t confused by the need to own a bands entire bootlegged existence. I just fucking hate Led Zeppelin. I never saw the need to “get the led out”. Fuck those guys with a fish. I was also confused by Maxim reporting all of this like it was something new.
Pretty much since my family got our first computer in ’96 I’ve been using the internet to download live bootlegs. When Napster went down I wept. You see for me there’s no guilt in it. I don’t feel like I’m stealing from the band because I’ll buy their studio albums anyway. Everybody wins, despite what Rerun and the Doobie Brothers would have you believe (and if you don’t get that reference, hopefully TV Land will bring back What’s Happening sometime soon cause boy are you missin’ out, and if you do get that reference… Hey Hey Hey). I even remember a time slightly before the internet where you could buy bootleg cassette tapes on streets like St. Marks in NYC for $3 bucks or so. I even bought a VHS bootleg of THREE Operation Ivy shows on one tape on St. Marks once. I found it in the back of a magazine stand/bodega/place that sold bongs and nose rings. The first show on the tape looked like the camera lens had been smeared with Vaseline before rolling. The second looked worse but sounded almost alright. And the third wasn’t half bad at all except that it got cutoff at the end and a Rage Against the Machine bootleg came on instead but then that was also quickly cutoff so that a Dead Kennedy’s show could mysteriously take over, before cutting off one last time and just straight ending.
Simply put bootlegs are great. Even the ones that sound like the band is playing inside a tin can halfway across town have their own understated charm. This happens somewhat rarely these days as computer technology has made it so that you can download shows in high fidelity lossless formats like FLAC or WAV or SHN. Some sites even make you agree that you won’t downgrade the files to MP3 and fuck with the bit rate and subtle nuances therein. These are hardcore audio nerds we’re talking about here. Rarely these days to you run across copies of copies of copies of what were shitty recordings to begin with.
Last month I got to hear Blake Schwarzenbach’s (Jawbreaker; Jets to Brazil) new band Thorns of Life. They don’t have an album out yet. But someone bootlegged their show at 924 Gilman St. and it’s on the internet for me to listen to in Jersey. This may not sound like a big deal, but to a fan of his two previous bands it is a huge fucking deal when you can hear twelve new songs before they’re even laid down in a studio. A couple few years ago (back when eBay still allowed people to sell bootlegs on their site) I picked up a copy of an Afghan Whigs show at Maxwell’s from ‘92. By this time the band had just broken up and there was no hope of ever hearing any new music by them. But for $6 plus shipping I was able to not only get to relive a concert I didn’t go to, but I was treated with some hilarious Greg Dulli stage banter where he brings a heckler on stage to defend his position as “heckler of the night” against some other rowdy fan. On another Whigs bootleg I own (ordered it from some dude in France) they break out into Nuttin’ But a G Thang at one point. This is where the magic of bootlegs lie. If you’re lucky enough your ears are treated to sounds that were never meant for studio recordings.
Greedy bands and record labels will argue that bootlegs at one time or another were killing the recording industry by putting inferior versions of songs out to the public and detracting from album sales. I don’t think they’re right but even if they are… I think Speedo put it best when he said “KILLIN’ AIN’T WRONG!” With this we at the FSS would like to invite you to the FSS Bootleg Series. We’ll provide the recommendations; it’s up to you to search out the recordings. Because as any fan of bootlegs knows, the quest is half the fun. Stayed tuned in a couple days or so and we’ll have our first review up. And feel free to hit us up with an email if you know of any good bootlegs we should look out for.
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