BEAT THE BOOTS
The title of this entry is also the title of an
8-album Frank Zappa boxed set (now out of print) released
in 1991 in an attempt to make legitimate versions of his most
popular bootleg albums available.
I picked up the cassette version of this (complete with the
"Beat the Boots!" t-shirt) about 5 years ago, and it's afforded
me many a fine hour of listening pleasure (with the first three
times I heard all 8 cassettes being on the 22 hour drive from Ohio
back to Texas).
According to Clinton Heylin's
Bootleg: The Secret History of the Other Recording Industry:
Zappa's own bootleg series, on the other hand, was actually
the genuine article. Beat the Boots I and II
consisted of two eight-album boxed sets that were simply
counterfeits of existing bootlegs, dubbed direct from the original
versions, complete with pops and crackles and original artwork.
Zappa, though, was just as vehemently opposed to bootlegs as
Dylan. The first volume even included one bootleg, As
An Am Zappa, on which he is complaining about
bootleggers who attend his concerts being able to release his
newest songs before him. THe Beat the Boots volumes were not intended to legitimize this
part of his oeuvre but to undercut the bootleggers and make Zappa
money from the bootlegger's industry (and make money they did).
One bootlegger even threatened to sue Zappa for the artwork
to 'Tis the Season to Be Jelly, which was,
of course, copyrighted and which Zappa was illegally
appropriating.
Heylin documents the love-hate relationships artists have had
with bootleggers over the years, as well as the predictable and
usually laughable worst-case scenarios and wolf-crying of
the recording industry (i.e. the no-talent cokeheads who'd
commodify their mothers if they could clone them).
The recording industry has always tried to conflate bootleggers
and pirates, although the differences are more stark than those
between night and day. The former release between 1,000-10,000
copies of individual recordings, nearly all of which are snagged
by obsessive fans who've already bought everything legally
available (and probably more than once). The latter copy officially
released albums (as opposed to the live shows and studio
out-takes of the former) and sell them in huge quantities to those
who buy them instead of the official releases.
In other words (and to put it in bean counter terminology), the
former don't cost the bean counters anything while the latter
do.
The bootleggers aren't all saints, though. Many release crap
in an attempt to make quick buckage. Nothing escapes Sturgeon's Law (i.e. 95% of everything is shit).
But, when they're good, they're damned good.
There aren't many instances when the officially released live albums
of a given group or performer are better than the best available bootlegs, with the only exceptions I can think of at the moment
being the Allman Brothers' Live at Fillmore East and Santana's Lotus.
And in the case of Led Zeppelin, one of the most revered bands
in r&r history, the bootlegs save their devoted legion of fans from
the travesty that is their official live album. It was recorded at the
end of a tour when the band members were either exhausted or
utterly drugged out or both.
The bootleggers supplied Zep fans with the good live
performances they craved. And, as Heylin relates, even the
most obsessive, fanatical, and crazed Zep fan would be more
than satisfied by the most herculean feat in the history of
bootlegging:
Between 1984 and 1987 Rock Solid churned out nearly a hundred
titles, of which the most extravagant was the ultimate in boxed-sets.
After Dylan's ten-album and twenty-album boxed-sets (the
latter, History, coming from Europe, the
Beatles' eleven-album set and Zappa's trio of ten-plus platters
[insert massive drooling from your humble author here]
(The Mystery Box, The History
and Collected Improvisations of Frank Zappa and
Twenty Years of Frank Zappa), Rock
Solid produced a seventy-album acrylic case of Led Zeppelin
live recordings. It was a project that went beyond collecting
(and reason), simply to prove a point (or two) - that it could
be done and that it would sell. Not surprisingly, The
Final Option, as it was appropriately named, was
a logistical nightmare.
Only 150 of those monster sets were produced, and if I'm ever
feeling really, really, really evil, I'll mention it to a Zep freakazoid
I've known for about a decade. He'll spend the rest of his life
looking for one of those puppies, which probably go for tens of
thousands of semolians these days.
Getting down to brass tacks, the book's well worth a read (especially
if you snagged it from the $1 bin like I did) if you're interested at
all in the subject, and fascinating if you're personally interested
in any of the masssively bootlegged artists of the last 30 years.
By the way, if you're interested in obtaining such things these
days, check out the "import" section at your local music
emporium. Various draconian laws passed in the last couple
of decades (and detailed in the book) that don't really distinguish
between bootlegging and piracy have increased the risk involved
in purveying such items.
posted by Steven Baum
4/27/2000 11:35:12 PM |
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