Bootlegs

[Dave_G]

Any of you cats have bootlegs?

Like 'em?

Hate 'em?

I have a few I like, but mostly they are crappy sonics so I dump 'em.

A few Tull ones are good, a few Yes ones, maybe a few others.

Lots of folks out there have huge passion for boots.

I get a bunch of Flower Kings boots and generally they aren't listenable.

Peace.

Dave

[DarrenH]

As you well know already Dave, I've got quite a few Tull boots. Some are very good, some are very crappy.

I don't collect boots per se, just Tull. And I won't buy boots of artists material if it's available legit. But since I already have everything legit that I can get from Tull I don't have a problem with acquiring Tull boots.

Some bands, Grateful Dead for instance, encouraged the taping of thier concerts and didn't mind their fans exchanging this material.

I have one Dead boot, Left In The Vaults vol 1, and it's pretty good. If your gonna listen to the Dead they are certainly better live. No pun intended.

Darren

[dean_martin]

I have a few boots. Several of Nirvana and Sonic Youth and a Babes in Toyland and Dinosuar Jr. My bootleg collecting days were in the 90s. Some of the Nirvana stuff is pretty good sonically. Some of it showed up later on official releases. I like the early small-venue stuff from Sonic Youth. With Nirvana, I tried to find the best for each stage of their career. These make for interesting comparisons.

I was able to listen to most of these in the record shop before purchasing. Some are from board tapes of live shows and these are generally the best.

BTW, the best Babes in Toyland live stuff that I've found is from The Peel Sessions which I believe is an import (my copy is on 10" purple vinyl), a live show from CBGBs on Painkillers and the couple of songs they do on the video 1991: The Year Punk Broke.

[Dusty Chalk]

I have a couple. I try to stay away from them, for no reason other than I find the sonics terribly annoying. But I've got a couple good ones -- these are the source recordings for concerts that were played on the radio. Mostly by Garbage (would've bought the Tori ones, but they were ex$pen$ive), but I've also got an old Fixx one on vinyl that I'm going to get digitized. (Westwood One -- got a great version of The Fool on it, really long, takes up just about a whole side of slab.)

[Troy]

Add me to the list of people that don't really like 'em.

I've received a few by some favorite artists from some of our boardmates over the years, but find the sonics to start at bad and rapidly slide downhill from there. Who wants to listen to a live show that sounds like it was recorded from inside a sleepingbag?

I know some artists actually try and release boots as legit albums to try and counter the pirates taking $ away from them (Zappa and others), but I think releasing anything with substandard packaging and sonics is counter-productive and creates bad feelings with listeners. Why not release high quality live material so that no one wants or needs boots?

I have a good friend that went through a boot frenzy in the late 90s and I was shocked at the ridiculous prices of this junk too. I just don't get it.