Take one listen to their Live at Lupos bootleg and answer the question, “Was Hardcore dead in 1986?”. You’d be wrong if you said it was. Here’s a band at the top of their game. Singer Dave Smalley (ex DYS and future All) sure doesn’t sound dead to me. Brian Baker (ex Minor Threat and future Bad Religion) doesn’t sound dead either. Is this the best bootleg you’ll ever hear? No. There’s a great deal of tape hiss present and if you don’t turn the volume way up you won’t even hear the band backing Smalley, just his yelling. But bootleg sound quality aside the band is giving it their all, the songs are some of their best, and they prove a crucial point about Hardcore in particular and Punk in general. That is, that it never really died. Some people would have you believe it died in ’77, others ’86, still some ’95. The truth though is even if it wanes in popularity, even if regional scenes come and go, even if styles progress and later regress, even if bands quit and reform, it all never really goes away. It’s always there for the next bunch of kids coming up that need it to be there even if their predecessors are already tired of it. And it’s bands like Dag Nasty that did it during the lean years that matter the most. They kept the torch burning when it wasn’t popular or profitable.  They held it down in spite of everything.  They’re the ones that made it so that you’re reading this now and still giving a shit.

The band would go through numerous lineup changes through the years (this one with Smalley wasn’t their first either), but I think this bootleg represents Dag Nasty at their best, which is why in many circles this is considered their classic lineup. You can download this show and others for free on their website, but you should also make it a point to pick up “Can I Say” as it’s every bit as important as an album like “Out of Step” even if it’s not as widely available. I think they couldn’t have put it better in their closing song Justification.

Take a look at what you’re doing
And tell me I’m too late.
You say we’re walking backwards
Well, that dead horse sure can run.
It sure can run!

Public Image Limited - Live at The Ritz (NYC) May 15, 1981

I recently bought the reissue of Flipper’s “Generic” album. Aside from having one of my favorite lyrics ever on the song Ever (“Ever look at a flower and hate it?”), the other thing I noticed was the similarity of the album cover to Public Image Limited’s “Album”. After a little searching I also found another album by Flipper called “Public Flipper Limited” which pretty much confirmed the Flipper / PiL link. But the question remains, why is Flipper paying homage to a band that were essentially their peers at the time? The answer (I think) is that they’re not paying homage at all. They’re fucking with them. Calling them out on their bullshit. And basically saying fuck you, we’re better. They’re probably right too. But here’s where I stop talking about Flipper and move on to PiL.

John Lydon (nay Rotten) is an asshole. He inspires hatred in people to an extent that rivals almost ever other musician ever. He’s arrogant, obnoxious, and just a straight asshole. Or is he? Maybe he just likes fucking with people. And to an extent I don’t think that makes someone an asshole. It’s almost endearing in an odd way. Like when Lee Ving tells that chick to not “bite so hard when he cums” in “The Decline”. Being an asshole was then and is now pretty fucking punk rock. I might catch a lot of shit for this. And I’m not saying that you have to be an asshole to be a punk or anything like that. But part of being punk is letting everyone else know to fuck off. John Lydon built a career around this and is just really fucking good at it. I mean pissing people off is his art in a way.

So after two paragraph’s you might be wondering what in the hell is the point of this review. And here it is. The first concert in the FSS Bootleg Series is Public Image Limited live at the Ritz, NYC, May 15, 1981 with bonus tracks from their appearance on the Tomorrow Show on June 27, 1980. Both recordings consist of John Lydon pissing people the fuck off. The Ritz show turns into a fucking riot. At one point you hear someone scream “RUSH THE STAGE!”.  People show up I think to see him doing his Sex Pistols shtick and instead end up being treated to a barrage of insults and music that couldn’t be further from his previous band. You can hear people screaming at him on the recording, booing him.  You hear people throwing shit at the stage and trying to destroy their equipment. You hear people trying to get on the stage to beat Lydon and crew up. Johnny may be acting, but they are not. They want to kill him. They’ve paid their hard earned money to see him and now he’s fucked with them so much that they actually want to fucking murder him and get their money back. The music on this recording is terrible. I don’t even know if you can call it music at all. It’s more noise, feedback, and experimental bullshit than anything else. The real reason to seek this recording out is to hear the frenzy Lydon builds up around him. Again, music isn’t his art. It’s pissing people off.

The Tomorrow Show recording is somewhat similar with the only difference being there is no music. It’s just Lydon and crew straight pissing off Tom Snyder for the eleven or so minute segment. Lydon acts annoyed with every question asked, like they are the dumbest fucking questions ever asked of anybody. His answers are confrontational, flippant, and insane. He goes on for sometime about how PiL isn’t a band. They’re a company. If Tom Snyder wasn’t a professional he probably would’ve went to commercial and tackled Lydon. But that’s what Lydon would’ve wanted anyway so why give it to him? Lydon thrives on the reactions he inspires in people. If you take the bait you’re probably more fucked than if you just sat there and took it with a straight face. Listening to him do this to other people for me is pure entertainment. Although I’m not sure how I would’ve felt about it if I was on the receiving end of things. So, my recommendation is to search both of these recordings out and decide for yourself how you feel about him. No matter which side you come out on though, you can’t argue this with the fact that he will get a reaction out of you one way or the next.

(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.