The Smiley Smile Message Board

Well now that we getting Smile Sessions officially. I'm drawn towards the pros & cons of bootlegs. Speaking personally I feel that on hearing unofficial tracks & sessions has only made me more interested in the world of the Beach Boys. The Unsurpassed Masters collection has drawn me in that started when I first brought the official Pet Sounds Box Set. Bootlegs as well as more recent official  box sets blown away the popular myth that drugs wreaked the studio sessions esp with Smile. To my mind Bootlegs has done a great service to groups like The Beach Boys esp with sessions work which made us all know just how hard it was to get all these sounds down into a whole. Any more thoughts on this guys??     

Cons are of course loss of income. But like I'd said before almost all who buy bootleg will buy all the official stuff too IMHO :)

I have never purchased a BB bootleg but having discovered some via internet 12 years ago I purchased as much of their catalog that I have come across. To me the bootlegs caught my attention to a phenomenal body of work unsurpassed by no others.

Bootlegs introduced me to Brian's late 1970s work, which is pretty odd, but still great to listen to.

Back in the days pre internet I know of friends who would pay £15 per CD in a market (not by me of course)

T2580 cost me £25 in 1990. I would have paid twice that without thinking, probably more.

Is that one of the Smile bootlegs?. If so then when my friend brought me one it was only £15 in 1999. What a happy day that was playing the CD at work too lol :)

to us old-timers, bootlegs were the doorway to all things SMiLE.  Yes, the band didn't get paid. But without bootlegs, we would only know the tracks by what was officially released.  On that note, I've been thinking alot lately about how I WAYHAY prefer my experience with SMiLE than what new-comers have had.  My older brother was a surfer (Long Island) and so I was weaned on the BBs since maybe age 8 (I'm in my 50's).  There was no internet to check on facts -hell, there were barely any books to find on subjects as clandestine as the SMiLE tracks.  A mention here and there, and of course the legend that Brian went mad and burned all the tracks.

Then in the early 1980's, the first boot came out that scrambled my brain.  And it even had tracks that weren't BB tracks but none of us knew!   So the imagined SMiLE was WAY different than what Brian delivered a few years ago.  Then the double boot, then Dom's book, little by little, we found out clues.  Each time something surfaced, it was utterly thrilling - like a terrific mystery novel.  Then over the last ten years, SO MUCH DETAIL and all the Sea of Tunes stuff, Secret smile, etc.  To most of you, it all came in one huge hurl of mp3's.  To some of us, each little shard that found it's way out of the vault would change the course of our week.  And out of habit, even in the last few years, a new cd of stuff would still stop me in my tracks.  Maybe somewhat because of the wonderful memories of all that wondering.  It was like visiting an old friend of mystery.

Just wanted to say that given the option of having it all at once, like the Inet has made possible to lots of you, I'd still prefer the way I saw it gradually come out over the last 20-odd years.  The countless hours spent listening and theorizing are like an old friend that I'm going to miss.  And in some ways, I may prefer the sound of some of the boots - they add a whole layer of "reach-for-it-but-can't-quite-grab" that clean masters are going to lack - those pops and crackles made a sonic stage that will be lost.  I'm sure some of you won't understand what I mean, but I"m sure some do.

BRING IT ON !!!

The biggest problems with boots were repetition, lousy sequencing, faulty liner notes (if any), bad cover design (with a few great exceptions), variable audio quality, and high cost.

On the upside: when the sound quality was good, you could be in for some cool listening. But sadly, most bootleggers were poor programmers and lousy packagers. There are exceptions, but not that many.

I've loved me some boots, but over the years, I got frustrated with the sloppiness. I appreciate good presentation.

Great reply Changeng thank you. Yes I echo was you say too. And like you I've had about 20yrs hearing Beatles, Beach Boys, Jimi Hendrix, Syd Barrett, Nick Drake as well via Markets & like minded friends. And yes its always a joy to get hold or hear an unknown bootleg (Remember no internet to recommend or download the stuff) it was all word of mouth or horrors of horrors taking a risk and buying blind so to speak. I do kind of miss this days to be honest. Kids now days don't rightly know how lucky there are lol (Sorry shades of The Four Yorkshire Men comedy sketch lol)

I got lots of boots for free on Napster! Shhhhh! Don't tell. Of course I have bought the Dennis POB rerelease and am going to buy the Smile box set. Most of what I downloaded were from those two albums because I couldn't find them anywhere. A friend I met at a Grandaddy concert in Dallas gave me the Smile past masters from (Sea of Tunes?) which have since been stolen.

But the quality is usually not that great on these things, especially downloads.

I think that, while it's certainly regrettable that some material that could be considered embarrassing has leaked out, bootlegs have done at least the small deed of tiding the hardcore fans over in between releases that have grown fewer and farther between. The fact that the fans go through exorbitant amounts of session material on bootlegs and are still wanting more is indicative of at least a niche market in our already niche market of fandom. I have never paid for bootlegs; I'd much rather compensate the artist. This is why we were all stoked about the Beach Boys Central website...but nothing ever came of it and probably nothing ever will. Bootlegs will still serve a purpose, however questionable it may be. They serve as more examples of the music we love.

Ahhh-a post overflowing with incredible insight-an accurate portrayal of what we senior fans experienced over the decades. Thank you!

Sounds like my story - I remember in 1982-3 coming across the first SMiLE vinyl release - Got a sense of what Worms was, Old Master Painter, etc.  Here Come Da Honeydew Man for good measure.  Never regret for a moment those purchases.  I remember trading cassettes in the late 70s with some BBFUN folks which isn't technically a bootleg is it?

Back in the pre-internet days in the 1990's, I was known to spend about $100-$200 just on bootleg cd's. That was back when you could find actual silver pressed cd's. It got to the point where some people who worked at a cd store I frequented would let me know when the latest Beatles and Who boots came in.  ;D I'm really torn on the bootleg issue. On one hand, as a collector I am grateful for whatever leaks out. On the other hand, if Brian Wilson were to learn about the "cocaine sessions", or hear his version of "Drip Drop", he might very well be embarrassed, or down right ashamed. There lies the moral dilemma of bootlegs.

Honestly, at its most basic, I think bootlegs are good insofar as the distribution of material which would not otherwise get released officially -- for whatever reason -- is concerned. It's understandable that, say, Capitol and/or BRI wouldn't want Adult Child released. It would make them comparatively no (or certainly very little) money, and it wouldn't be worth the expense for them to do so as far as they and their chequebooks are concerned. However, I am glad that it did get bootlegged so that it could be heard by fans at the very least! Plus, I think with the advent of the Internet there seems to be less of an incentive to actually purchase boots these days, when you could instead just upload them somewhere and share them as widely (or not) as you like, and also to help facilitate more community-oriented bootlegging resources -- material trading, blank-and-postage deals, live recorded shows, and so on.

Consider another example, if you like: The Anthology of American Folk Music, Volumes 1-3 (compiled by Harry Smith) that was released in 1952 by Folkways Records. All of the recordings on that collection were both recorded and released by other, major labels -- RCA Victor, Columbia, ...possibly another one or two I'm forgetting? -- which Folkways technically had no deals with in releasing their anthology. Thus, these major labels accused Moe Asch of selling a bootleg and cutting into their profits! Of course, being the savvy troublemaker he was, Asch noted that these recordings were actually in the public domain by that time, having been recorded decades earlier and/or not having had renewed copyrights -- and anyway the majors had declined to release them for public consumption despite the want for them, so he filled that void! I don't think anyone who heard that collection at the time would have disagreed with Asch's move. (When it was reissued in 1997, I will note, Smithsonian Folkways did clear its release with the labels who owned the original recordings from the early 20th century.)

That may be too noble a picture of a bootlegger, but that is basically how I see what, say, Vigotone or Purple Chick or Sea Of Tunes or whoever else does, and why it's mightily worthwhile, even if profit is involved there too (as it seemingly was not such a concern for Folkways).

I guess I'm sort of an old-timer when it comes to bootlegs - I got my first bootleg (Beatles Live in Tokyo 66 on vinyl) in 1986.  Then in 1987 I found out about Goldmine and the monthly record shows in my area that I attended monthly for years.  It was such a thrill to get up early on a Saturday, take a 40 minute drive to the Holiday Inn where the show was held, attended by some really weird looking people.  Most of the stuff was legit of course, but the bootleg dealers were there too - vinyl, cassettes, and video tapes.  In 1988-89 CD bootlegs entered the market.  The average LP was $20.00 a pop then, usually for a double LP, and it was like finding unknown treasures every time.  The lousy thing was most of the time you were buying completely unknown material, with unknown quality.  But you had to take some chances I guess.

I started out finding a guy with a ton of Beatles bootlegs, and I remember buying a whole bunch of them at once.  Studio outtakes gallore that I had never heard of, and sessions of many tracks.  Then I got into Led Zeppelin, and my collecting skyrocketed.  I wasn't into the Beach Boys all these years (finally got into them in 2000) so I never paid attention to their bootlegs.  But I can relate to a lot of you who remember how it was to get things little by little, the tape trading, the phone calls, the classified ads, the double crossers, the great connections, the fanzines, Goldmine and ICE Magazine, the anticipation for the mail to come with a package, a brand new release that blew you away, etc.  They were great memories, and I would do it all again to cherish the music so much more than you do now.  It just doesn't seem right to be able to get in a few hours what took many of us decades to find.  But believe me, it was a trip, and we had a lot of fun.

I think bootlegs are a win-win for the artists and their fans.  For one, it's the true die hard fans that want bootlegs simply because they can't get enough of their favorite artist's music.  They are more than willing to purchase any official product the artist releases, but if getting a bootleg via the black market is the only alternative, then that's what they have to do.  I would have loved to have given my money to the artists back in the day rather than bootleg sellers, that's for sure.  Today, we can readily get just about anything for free (which is simply amazing to me) and that's pretty cool that people share the music like that.  But again, if the artists want to recoup some of this money, they should release this stuff (with better quality) and the same fans will probably buy it.

As a musician myself, I do have to admit that there are some musical things I've recorded that I would probably not want the public to hear, and in that context, I suppose an artist would have a right to feel violated in that no one was supposed to hear a specific recording.  But that is the risk you run when you press record and multiple people over many years have access to such material.  It's bound to leak out.  In the end, bootlegs are a dream come true for me, and a huge part of my life for the past 25 years.

Same here. I never paid for a bootleg. I got into bootlegs in the late 90s so it was more common to trade instead of purchase. But because of those bootlegs I did purchase every official Beach Boys CD to date (except Summer in Paradise of course)!

YEA FOR BOOTS!

I personally love them, I even usually print off the covers for them and make CD cases, but I never buy them. I can't find them anywhere anyway! I do have a couple of Vinyl Boots (Red Vinyl SOT SMiLE £10/Beatles Christmas Album £10) but they do have the undermining factor that, the artist releases what they want you to hear, and bootlegs usually give out the interesting side of things, but show a stage with a lack of quality.

As other posters have said, Bootlegs give fans an opportunity to hear material which will never be released down commercial viability or whatever. From my own personal experience, I wouldn't be a Beach Boys fan (or no more than a casual one) without bootlegs, someone sent me Sweet Insanity which was such a strange album that I developed a curiosity towards their other stuff, I would never have thought of looking into The Beach Boys music beyond the hits otherwise.

What I DESPISE about some bootlegs is the way they are obtained, things like Unsurpassed Masters I have no problem with, since that is copied from the original tape, however when something comes from a tape that was stolen from <insert musician/whoever>'s car it leaves me a little cold.

Uhhhh...technically it's all stolen material, for better or worse.

I know it's a lesser of two evils sort of thing, but if something is actually physically stolen instead of copied, it feels worse to me.

Yep, better to steal from an owner's cash register than from his wallet. ;)

Look. If it weren't for bootlegs, we wouldn't have heard diamonds in the rough like the alternate version of Hey Little Tomboy and Battle Hymm of the Republic!

On a personal level though, if it weren't for SMiLE bootlegs circulating since the late 70's, I wouldn't have heard much of the material already coming out on the upcoming SMiLE box set. For that, I'm eternally grateful!  Also, if there are readers here who 'marketed' the Sea Of Tunes, Dumb Angel, Purple Chick, Vigotone, Silver Rarities, Yellow Dog, Midnight Beat, Invasion Unlimited, Wilson Records, Brother Records, Spank, Pegboy, Picaresque Records, Polyphone, Silver Shadow, Hang Ten, Cork On The Ocean, and Dr. Ebbetts bootlegs, please accept my deep gratitude!  ;D

That's a Grammy worthy Thank You list. ;)

Pro: Make a lot of friends trading and I have learned a ton about the BBs history from these things.

Con: The quality is not always the best and sometimes I honestly wish some of these things were legal!

Dude, that's like saying you don't mind someone taking obscene pictures of your daughter as long as she isn't kidnapped! It's the same breach of trust!

Hey, I look at bootleggers as the Robin Hood's of music.

Regarding cons, I don't buy the "loss of income" logic -- unless you mean losing your own income by purchasing them!

Case in point..."Lazy Lizzie" is not legally available for purchase. (thank GOD!) In 1976 or whenever it was recorded, it stayed in the vaults. It wasn't available for sale. Beach Boys lost no potential money from it because they didn't make it available for sale.

"Lazy Lizzie" years later appeared on bootlegs. People bought copies. Still, Beach Boys didn't lose any money. Why? Because they weren't offering it for sale in the first place.

I also don't buy the "stealing" logic. As someone mentioned before, if you copy the music, the source is still there. Steal the actual tapes, and they're gone (as was allegedly the case with Sweet Insanity). Steal money from a wallet, the money is gone. Steal money from a cash register, the money is still gone. Copy tapes from the vaults, the tapes are still in the vaults.

Aside from the fact that some music is literally stolen from archives -- that is, the tape is taken away, artist no longer has it -- the only other real problem I see with bootlegs is that it takes control away from the artist. Let's face it, Brian did not want us to hear Smile. Period. However, because some of the music leaked out, people have heard it against his wishes.

Of course, bootlegs are only distributed to a negligible fraction of the music-listening audience; maybe more people hear bootlegged music now because of the ease of Internet transactions (and even then, many traded/owned/bought boots for no other reason than to have said boots to be used as fodder for later transactions), but still, the vast majority of audiences listen almost exclusively to real, commercially-released, artist-approved music. The artist still has control over what the masses hear.

Hey, ya gotta give credit where credit's due. There's a fine gentleman who currently posts on this board who produced the best bootlegs of the 70's and 80's. Those vinyl albums, EP's, and singles made for great additions to the ol' collectione, lemme tell you!  ;D

My own fandom has been fuelled and fired by boots*. They've filled the long (and getting longer, overall) gaps between official releases and helped keep the flame alive within. I have every official release – I have many o them several times over, on vinyl and CD, and if the booted stuff came out officially I'd buy hat again (I've even got re-issues of boots).  Downloaded MP3 sh*t just isn't the same somehow, and I don't mean just the sound quality.


I'm with Changeng all the way but consider this: what if I cut & pasted all the interesting research-based threads on this board, put them in a doc and published a book, without crediting anyone who'd ever posted, who was responsible for the research, for the impassioned text… and particularly didn't give you the share of royalties your posts should entitle you to. Pretty soon there'd probably be a thread devoted to what a thieving scab I was, how I ripped off the board members, cheated them, stole their work, their thoughts… sh*t, I might even get banned  :o

That's what a bootlegger does, only worse because while we only post here recreationally, a bootlegger rips off those whose livelihoods depend on music sales; their family's next meal is bought with the proceeds of their artistic efforts. Okay so their incomes and lifestyles can be huge and lavish but that's just a reflection of their talent and popularity.

We buy boots, then we ought to at least consider that. Then move on…

Other side of the coin is that without the boots that have fuelled our interest for so long, and kept that flame alive, there'd probably be no SMiLE set coming out in six weeks time.**


* Of course, this post is a piece of creative writing; I never have owned a bootleg and have only ever heard them described by third parties. I passed a shop that was selling them once but only found out a week later, during a chance conversation with a well-known burglar/highwayman/war criminal/mass murderer who had bought one, furtively. Which was of course a naughty thing to do and I don't doubt he got arrested and sentenced like he deserved.

** That's assuming the Capitol execs haven't read this and decide to punish us all by scrapping the release for another 45 years…   :lol

Regarding actual, tangible tapes being stolen: How does this work? Considering that stolen tapes become bootlegs, one has to know what he/she is stealing and how to then go about (black) marketing it. For example, i've always wondered about the case of Tom Waits' Alice demos being stolen from his car. Those recordings were widely bootlegged in the 90s, which makes one draw the logical conclusion that whoever stole those tapes knew exactly what they were doing, whose car it was, what was in that car, etc. But this begs the question: is that...a fan? A fan stealing the artist's work and profiting from it? That's a disturbing thought. If not a fan, then what? Someone who knows enough about the artist? Someone who closely monitors (i.e. stalks) the artist to know when to make the right move to come into the possession of something lucrative? Not that that's any less disturbing. It's a weird world. 

I'm about to trade my copy of Jimmy Eat World's Futures album on vinyl for a copy of what will be my first BB Smile bootleg on vinyl....pretty pumped!

I believe it was Alan Boyd who recalled an incident a few years back in which he held a gathering for some fans at his house, only to learn after the fact that a reference cassette that he left out in the open for everyone to see was swiped, and later appeared on bootlegs.