Best / Worst Bootlegs

there are many (obviously) 70s-era miles bootlegs floating around. i have several(unnamed, except for the dates, which escape me since i'm at work) around the time of the "dark magus" show which absolutely kick like a mule.

BAD:
Dozens of mediocre, faceless, post-1981 Springsteens

Avoid Incredible String Band's Mothers Day (really shitty quality) and most Morrissey boots

all the Neil Young boots of his vinyl only albums are great though

Oh, and it's not a bootleg (which makes it even more pathetic) but a cd reissue of The Fall's Live at the Witch Trials has vinyl skips on it -

Bob Marley's -- Record Plant (Sausalito '72); don't let this laid back set fool you, their restrained fury focusses on some their most musically crafted recordings.

Tortoise' - Dead Pigeon...somethin' something???; avoid, as their live material doesn't translate all too well.

R.E.M. -- Live at Tyrone's 40 Watt Club, 1980; shitty as all hell as far as the recording quality goes -- but what a set!

...i ain't heard it, but i'm suprised nobody's mentioned the YHF outtakes.

Other fantastic bootlegs:
Various Artists - The Best Bootlegs in the World Ever
Negativland - These Guys are From England And Who Gives a Shit
Beatles - Get Back
Rolling Stones - Liver Than You'll Ever Be
Happy Mondays - Big Babyhead Bootleg Album

I never knew the Albini mix of In Utero has been bootlegged. Is it any good? Any different from the real version???

ace radio 4 (uk) show about bootlegs. loads of amazing interesting stuff here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00g3yqn/Archive_on_4_For_One_Night_Illegally_The_History_of_the_Bootleg/

Was listening to that as it aired. Good show, well worth a listen.

George Harrison's demos & ruffs for "All Things Must Pass," just him playing those songs on guitar by himself, boot commonly known as "Beware of Abkco," is one of my favorites. Lovely guitar playing and singing.

What's with the boot community's obsession with FLAC? Does the quality degrade that much on a boot if you convert it to mp3?

It's a thing about FLAC being lossless, and keeping the best possible (least degraded by multiple conversions) version being the one traded. If you convert it to mp3, for your own use, they don't want you to distribute it that way. They really don't get a say in what you do though.

Played through digital output to a DAC, the difference is hearable. Lots of downloading bandwidth is nice for big files too.

the sound quality diff between 320kbs and flac is minimal

but you're talking about stuff that is often poorly recorded in the first place, and listening to dark side of the moon at 192kbs is not the same as listening to some sabbath stadium show recorded by a guy with a tape recorder strapped to his hip at 192kbs, you want every bit of sound quality you can wring out of that thing

and if you let people trade mp3s you start getting really unpredictable quality, think about the quality you get out of s!sk, rips from skipping discs, mp3s that have been converted and recoverted, using shitty mp3 encoders, albums pieced together from different rips at different encoding rates, it's an archivist's nightmare

I'll tell you the neil young bottom line '74 show I have in FLAC format is better sounding than any mp3 version I ever downloaded, and for that I am indebted to the boot community's aspie zeal in this area

and yeah, flac is a lossless format that produces way smaller file sizes than wav

the death of professionally produced bootlegs is sad. but also good. can't believe i used to pay £20+ for some pretty shit quality cd boots from record fairs. anyway my vote would go for any of the first four nirvana outcesticide boots, which i still find more listenable than the lps which i've totally overplayed.

is there a gd (free) flac converter to mp3?

FreeRIP does the job (www.freerip.com), but in the free version will only let you cue up 5 tracks at a time.

It works fine though and is the one I use. If there are better free converters out there, I'd be interested to hear about them.

dppoweramp is good for Flac to MP3 conversion, but crap for within-format bit rate conversion as I found out compiling the ILX plays Wire compilation.

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/

Wolfgang's vault has a lot of good streaming bootleg goodness, the content is generally canonical/Mojo-reader oriented stuff.
http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/

listening to the springsteen winterland and wooooo

I recently bought a proper audiophile turntable, and just started ripping vinyl again, and the difference between wav and mp3 seems way more noticeable on music I've recorded from that than it did on my old turntable (which was a piece of junk).

Is there a good free converter to get from wav to flac? At the moment I'm recording to wav then converting to 320 mp3 for my ipod, but I'd like to get the wavs converted to flac so they don't take up so much disk space.

Try dbpoweramp CP

My version of dbpoweramp is too old for FLAC cos I have the old version that lets you convert to mp3.

Unless that's free again now? They started charging for it a few years ago.

Nope, you have to pay for dbpoweramp still.

flac to mp3 is a two-stage process for me, I use macflac to convert the flac to wav and then itunes to convert the wav to mp3

Peter Hammill's Skeletons of Songs is a very intense live solo boot. Sadly there are very few decent live recordings of prime-era Van der Graaf Generator.

On Springsteen, I echo the love for Winterland Night and would add Nassau Night and Brixton Night (all Crystal Cat releases I believe).

What's the best Dark Side-era Floyd boot?

there's a good one from Radio City Music Hall in NYC, right before it came out - not sure about the date.

I have been a D!M3 member since late 2004 and I for one welcome the death of $25 bootleg CDs.

I am also a FLAC geek and it sounds way better than 192, harder to tell at 320 though unless I'm playing it through the really good speakers.

I'm on a Mac so I use xACT for all my conversions, but it doesn't do FLAC>MP3. That would be handy.

XP - I'm sure I downloaded dbpoweramp recently (like in the last 8 months or so) for nothing, I'll have a check.

Any of the Japanese Dark Side tour boots are great, but they played it in it's entirety right up till '74. I have tons of them Anagram drop me a mail if you like and I can hit you up.

On Mac, you can use ALL2MP3 to do FLAC>MP3. I only use xACT if I want to burn a copy as an audio disc.

The free version of Switch does FLAC -> MP3, among other things.

the last free version of dbpoweramp that did mp3 conversion was R10

it's what I use, you can still find it on the net

it will also do FLAC conversion, you just need the codec pack for it

that switch app looks interesting, but I wonder how they get away with free mp3 encoding, the lame encoder is not free and that's why there are few apps that offer it free

The FLAC codec on the dbpoweramp site says it requires R12+ which I don't have.

don't believe everything you read in teh internet

Yeah, but I also downloaded it anyway and it failed to install.

here's an old skool flac codec for dbpoweramp, should work with earlier versions

http://www.mediafire.com/?9zkkmfdvuiouxx6

worst: anything grateful dead related.

outdated dbpoweramp codecs I have loved

dBpowerAMP-codec-aiff.exe
dbpoweramp-codec-flac.exe
dBpoweramp-Codec-m4a.exe
dBpowerAMP-codec-MonkeysAudio.exe
dBpowerAMP-codec-mp4-aac-decode.exe
dbpoweramp-codec-mp4.exe
dbpoweramp-codec-musepack.exe
dBpowerAMP-codec-ogg.exe
dBpowerAMP-codec-ra.exe
dBpowerAMP-codec-shorten.exe
dBpowerAMP-codec-wmav91.exe

You are awesome! That did work, thanks a lot.

you are welcome

been enjoying this '88 soundboard of a foetus show in oslo, backing band is basically swans -
norman westberg, al kizys, ted parsons

which is kind of ironic since I saw the '89 show that was recorded for the male release and thought it was terrible at the time

Wolfgang's vault has a lot of good streaming bootleg goodness, the content is generally canonical/Mojo-reader oriented stuff.
http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/

― SoftDog (MaresNest), Friday, October 15, 2010 5:25 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark

True, but they also have such surprising treasures as Sunny Murray's and Cecil Taylor's 1966 Newport sets.

The free version of Switch does FLAC -> MP3, among other things.

― Brad C., Friday, October 15, 2010 9:09 AM (4 days ago) Bookmark

FYI I'd stay away from this one. maybe it's perfectly innocent but it seems like adware. installed a whole bunch of other apps on my machine without a clear uninstall link. then when I uninstalled it, it corrupted the mp3 associations.

worst: LED ZEPPELIN OWNS THIS SUBJECT.

just wrote this on another list so thought I'd pass it on

Black Flag Marquee '84
About my favourite live set of all time. Recorded by a friend of mine, though it is possible there are other versions. Seems to have a Link Wray liker quality that I haven't really heard elsewhere.
The peak of the proto-stoner rock band to my ears anyway.

Swans Mean Fiddler '88
Took me ages to find a live set from this era which is about my favourite ever from the Swans. Don't think I've heard the Manchester Academy set since the tinme and that one really impressed me when I saw it.

Grateful Dead Sunshine Daydream/Veneta oregon '72
either medium captures the band at a peak that you would expect to have found official release by now and still somehow hasn't been. Both come form the same gig a show held at Ken Kesey's place in Oregon and a benefit for a dairy.
Possibly the greatest version of Dark Star ever, though there are a few others in competition.

Roxy Music BBC sessions
really don't know why this isn't officially released yet. Got some great music on it. Not sure about the first session which features Davy O'List prior to the recruitment of Phil Manzanera.
Really is about time this was put out.

Birthday Party Minneapolis '83
corruscating recording of the band at what they think of as a peak, probably the peak. The band reduced to a 4 piece now that Phil Calvert's polyrhythmic drumming style has been deemed extraneous to current requirement. BAnd fell apart within I think 2 months of this show.

Can 22/5/72
Probably a few others by this lot too but this really does knock one's socks off.

Patti Smith WKBAI '75
the band prior to recruiting a drummer recorded live for a New York radio station and advertising for a drummer in the lyrics of a couple of songs.

Led zeppelin 27/4/69
I think that most of the '69 U.S. tour material catches them at their over the top best but this is the one I have on my walkman at least in part.

Henry Cow Freedom
3cd live set of the great UK RIO band live in 3 different European cities in '75 around the time they were touring with Robert Wyatt who can vbe heard on vocals on some of the choices. Tumbling improvisation really gets me off anyway.

will probably think of several others over the next while.
Stevo

good list, would love to hear that black flag gig.
i was just listening to a led zep 69 show and yeah, i do think that's my fave era, more 60s than 70s, if that makes sense.

here are ten of my faves, off the top of my head
television - portland 78
velvet underground - cleveland 68
dylan - basement tapes
feelies - chicago 86
beatles - esher tapes
neil young - fukuoka 76
go betweens - freakchild
big star - memphis 1974
fripp/eno - paris 75
talking heads - boston 79

my favorites from my three all-time favorite acts:

Funkadelic - Rocky Mountain Shakedown (Denver '76)
Beach Boys - Lei'd in Hawai'i
Spiritualized - Fucked Up Inside

hmm haven't heard that funkadelic -- ysi?

all I have is vinyl - shouldn't be hard to find tho, it's pretty well-known

to wit

yes! thx. great cover too.

the songtitles sort of arbitrary

the version of Coming Around the Mountain is the highlight

gonna have to weigh on on this when I'm back home...

Spiritualized - Fucked Up Inside

this was an official release

Robert Fripp - Pleasures in Pieces
Peter Hammill - Skeletons of Songs
Bruce Springsteen - Winterland Night, Brixton Night

oh I just saw that I recommended some of those 2 years ago

okay fine swap Fucked Up Inside for this one

which is a great set and a sentimental favorite because I was there

yow this rocky mountain shakedown thing is great. thanks again!

I like the part where George asks the audience if they believe in Santana

haha, were they playing with him or something, or was it just a random reference?

afaict the opening act was supposed to be Sly and the Family Stone (lol), but Santana filled in when Sly cancelled

Too many to count. Ignoring the usual suspects, there's this great Afrika Bambaataa show from Fort Lauderdale in '82. Basically anything by the original lineup of Mahavishnu Orchestra is super intense. There's some amazing Herbie Hancock Mwandishi shows around as well. Somewhere out there is a Jah Wobble show from First Ave in '83 where Prince shows up to encore Cloreen Bacon Skin. The Television Portland show has been mentioned, but I'm not sure Cleveland '75 has- for my money the best shows they did, Rocket From the Tombs doing their last ever concerts (in the original line-up) opening. There's a whole lot of brilliant punk and no wave floating around, more James Chance than you can shake a stick at. Mr. Bungle's shows from the European leg of their Disco Volante tour are nice as well, all kinds of oddball covers and plenty intense.

A lot of the best old bootlegs are getting released these days, so most of the boots worth listening to are so obscure probably nobody will want to listen to them. Stuff like audience tapes of Essential Logic and so forth.

Beatles Ultra Trax series and Unsurpassed Masters are vitally important, they are loaded with so much good stuff; there's some duplication between the two series but still worth seeking both of them out. Ultra Rare Trax 4 has the best version of Not Guilty that I've heard.

The source for a fair amount of this was an EMI engineer who had cancer and was given the job of listening to everything in the vault and helping put together the Beatles at Abbey Road presentation in 1983; he ran of cassette dubs, did his own mixes, etc, and left them for his family apparently with the directions to sell them after he died for finacial security. I find that bit of the story rather touching although I've been unable to unearth any more on it. His full set of tapes are also available as "Turn me on Dead Man".

Anyway, I listen to these things more than I listen to the finished albums now.