I've only heard one bootleg, but I thought making a thread on it would raise another interesting topic. What are your favorite official and unofficial bootlegs?
Pearl Jam is the king of bootlegs, my favorite being Mansfield, MA 2003. They opened with their own acoustic set and ended up playing 44 songs in total, showing why they were and still are truly one of the greatest live bands on Earth. It was also the final show of a 3 night stretch in Mansfield in which they played 82 different originals and 12 covers with only 1 repeated song over the three nights. Wish I was into them back then considering the venue was only about 15 miles from where I lived at the time and it's one of the best places to see live music.
It's weird because I don't even really know what bootleg means anymore. There are so many live releases in some form or other, and anything of decent quality eventually comes out as a bonus disc or whatever. My dad's a bootlegger, so as I was growing up he'd be sending and receiving packages full of Bob Dylan and Grateful Dead and Rolling Stones and Beatles and Neil Young and Elvis Costello and Ryan Adams and Bruce Springsteen and Jackie Leven (and so on and so forth) live shows and rare demos, not to mention the occasional oddities from punk bands and various weird other stuff, and over the years I kind of got bored and subsequently shied away from that side of things. There's only so many times you can listen to some shitty audience recording of a show you weren't even at. I was a bit more into it when I was a kid, and I've got quite a few Strokes and Libertines and Flaming Lips and White Stripes and Nirvana bootlegs, among others, but I virtually never go back to them anymore. I guess one particular boot that springs to mind is Pavement's show from The Palace in Hollywood in 1994, although I think even that's seen an official release in recent years in some capacity (a lot of soundboard recordings do, given that people can make money from them). Another that I do go back to fairly regularly is a soundboard of the first Pixies reunion concert. The version of 'U-Mass' on that is mad dope.
Well, this thread was short. Anyway, I just heard an official Zeppelin bootleg called Ballcrusher (kind of an AC/DC-esque title). The performances were very explosive, but the sound quality was poor due to the equipment used to record (I googled this) and the alkbum's video was most likely on a poor vinyl player. Anyway, the album is an official 1972 vinyl release. I give the album a 79. Next I'll hear the Zeppelin album (this is official, too) "The Dancing Avacado."
I never thought I would add a Led Zeppelin album to the site. And I'm going to add a second!
SingingPeasant96
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Someone just told me that "all bootlegs are technically unlawful." I doubt that. Knowing squat about bootlegs except that Bob Dylan created the first one, I want to know the difference between an official bootleg and an unofficial one besides someone from the company or the band deciding to release it. I wanna know because I added those three Zep bootlegs to the site, and they may be deleted unless I can find a source that says they are official. For a while I thought any vinyl releases meant it was an official bootleg, but someone told me that's not true.
I can't find the answers on Google, and I've googled many variants of the question "How do bootlegs become official?" "What's the difference between an official and unofficial bootleg?" "Is this an official bootleg?" I know there's such thing as an official bootleg. Pearl Jam and Bob Dylan and Weezer released some.
Does anybody here know how? This way, I can determine if "Ballcrusher," "Don't Mess With Texas," and "Ottawa Sunshine" are official. It's more likely due to information I've been given that the three are unofficial. However, I'd still like to know for future reference because I'll likely listen to more Zeppelin Bootlegs.
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