Bootlegs

[Beatlelennon65]

Let's talk about bootlegs. Who has them, who collects them, what are your favorites, what are you looking for? Anyone?

[bill p.]

Some of my favorites are the Beatles Ultra Rare Tracks Vol. 1-6, that came out in the late 80's. In recent years, I occasionally pick up titles on the Crystal Cat label. They are usually top notch audience recordings from recent shows by Dylan, Stones and Bruce. I recently picked up a few nice sounding Zappa's on the FZ label, and a couple LZ boards on Watchtower. I would like to find copies of the LZ Earls Court shows from 75 that just showed up on Watchtower.

[Xenu]

Ultra Rare Trax 1 and 2 were fine, but the rest of the volumes didn't impress me. IMO, Unsurpassed Masters were a big upgrade, and then the Studio 2 Sessions were an upgrade of *that*. Thing is, insofar as general studio boot quality is concerned, we haven't seen major upgrades since then...it's been all endless recycling, honestly.

My favorite bootlegs:
Beware of ABKCO, Crush All Boxes, Radiohead Berlin 2001 (quite possibly the most stellar line recording I've *ever* heard...and they play Kid A, to boot!), the Rolling Stones' Black Box (amazing outtakes that came out of nowhere, as far as I'm concerned), Beat Beat Beat at the Beeb (even though it's incomplete), the Who Fillmore '68, The Soft Machine "Middle Earth," Syd Barrett/Pink Floyd "Magnesium Proverbs" (nothing new, really, but a great collection), etc.

[lukpac]

No Tommy Demos or LALC?

Hrmph.

[bill p.]

Ultra Rare Trax 1 and 2 were fine, but the rest of the volumes didn't impress me. IMO, Unsurpassed Masters were a big upgrade, and then the Studio 2 Sessions were an upgrade of *that*. Thing is, insofar as general studio boot quality is concerned, we haven't seen major upgrades since then...it's been all endless recycling, honestly.

My favorite bootlegs:
Beware of ABKCO, Crush All Boxes, Radiohead Berlin 2001 (quite possibly the most stellar line recording I've *ever* heard...and they play Kid A, to boot!), the Rolling Stones' Black Box (amazing outtakes that came out of nowhere, as far as I'm concerned), Beat Beat Beat at the Beeb (even though it's incomplete), the Who Fillmore '68, The Soft Machine "Middle Earth," Syd Barrett/Pink Floyd "Magnesium Proverbs" (nothing new, really, but a great collection), etc.

I also have the Unsurpassed Masters series. They do repeat the Ultra Rare releases and include even more rarities. Still, I prefer the first six volumes of Ultra Rare for two reasons. 1) They came out first and got the ball rolling as far as HQ Beatles rarities. Back in '88 they were considered the holy grail of Beatles rarities. 2) Ultra Rare Tracks sound better, IMO.

Beware Of Abkco is a great cd, probably my favorite GH boot. I also like Pirate Songs and Somewhere In England quite a bit. A real nice Lennon title is Vigatones 3cd Imagine...all the outtakes.

[Ron]

My favorite bootlegs:
Beware of ABKCO, Crush All Boxes and the Rolling Stones' Black Box

Can you provide a little info on these? Doomo.

[Xenu]

Hehe...sorry about that, Luke. We can't always remember everything.

Beware of ABKCO: George demos for ATMP. Utterly splendid, and stellar stereo sound, too.

Crush All Boxes: In...uh, I think it was 1980, Zappa was going to release an album called "Crush All Boxes." He didn't, for some reason (apparently, he played it on the radio/it was quickly bootlegged...duh), although he later reconfigured the material into You Are What You Is/Tinseltown Rebellion (the latter of which actually uses the basic cover art for Crush All Boxes, the lettering of which can be seen beneath "Tinseltown Rebellion" on some versions).

Naturally, bootlegs of the unreleased album abound, either taken from the radio broadcast or (preferrably) an original test pressing. I like the material on CAB a *lot* more than I do the same material on YAWYI and Tinseltown...in many cases, the takes et cetera are identical, but the mixes are far less busy and compressed. FWIW, it's ambiguous as to whether *all* of YAWYI (well, most) existed at this point, and was mixed and simply wasn't included on the CAB album...a YAWYI-as-CAB release would be stellar and much appreciated.

Black Box...well, I'm not really up on my Stones bootleg lore (i.e. I'm unsure where stuff really originated), but AFAIK, this box was a knockout back when it came out, and it's still pretty essential today (despite being reissued by a non-YD company with a fairly crappy fourth disc added to it...I'm going to ignore that). It marked the first appearence of the "Metamorphosis rough tape" (i.e. the unmixed Metamorphosis tunes with the missing overdubs), a demo of As Tears Go By, the "Bright Lights" material in better quality than before, a instrumental underdub of Satisfaction (w/wonky tape problems, though), the instrumental Buttons reel (sounding better than on "Karaoke"), "Get Yourself Together," a backing vocals only mix of Let's Spend (w/wonky tape problems, but in stereo all the way through...was the mono insert merely used because of that backwards percussion effect?), two versions of Mother that sound hilariously better than the official version, an instrumental PIB that sounds real, an instrumental LadyJane which sounds questionable, ANOTHER new Gimme SHelter, some upgraded Sticky Fingers tracks, the usual Loving Cup alternate...

I like it!

[Ron]

Thanks for all that info, O Xenu Great One.

[mikenycLI]

Members,

Here's a link to an interesting website, for updates on new boots, from various artists...

http://www.bigo.com.sg/thisweek/collecting.html

[Xenu]

Ennnteresting. Thanks for the link.

Does anybody else find it interesting that the usual Russian pirate connections are suddenly putting old, OOP bootlegs back into print? I'm sure everyone's seen the Russian versions of Unsurpassed Masters, the Hollywood Bowl concerts (the Midnight Beat version...rockin'!) and various others on eBay as of late. All on real discs, too!

Heck, maybe next they'll go after the Beach Boys' Sea of Tunes, which would make a lot of people very happy...