Pros & Cons of Bootlegs

[SG7]

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!

[Jason]

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.

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!

[drbeachboy]

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! 

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

[37!ws]

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.

[Mikie]

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! 

That's a Grammy worthy Thank You list.

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! 

[The Shift]

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.

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 !!!

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  

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…  

[monicker]

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. 

[punkinhead]

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!

[Jason]

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 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.