Just PAY for it!

[lacey]

I am opening a can of worms here, and this is probably going to be one of those posts where the ground is scorched and no one says anything afterwards, but I don't give a shit. I'm fed up.

NOTE: This is not directed specifically at anyone. Especially you, Jason... of course you had to post something about it right when I was working up a post

Comments

[debg]

You know, I'm a big fan of paying royalties. I write books for a living, and I kinda need my royalties.

But I will download anything and everything in the way of bootleg, otherwise unavailable music that affects me - a huge chunk of my personal and emotional history - if it isn't available elsewhere.

The two most heavily represented artists in my music library are the Stones and the Jerry Garcia Band. I have everything the Stones recorded between 1967 and 1977. That's a lot of work.

With the exception of "Cocksucker Blues" - a rare in-studio recording that was never released to the public - and the "Satanic Majesty's Request" recording sessions (which are deeply personal to me and not available to for purchase publicly), every cut has been bought and paid for. Not a download in the bunch. I even bought and paid for the 1973 show from Australia, just so that I could hear Mick singing "Happy Birthday" to Nicky. No idea who profited - probably the bootlegger. But you know what, that show is a piece of my past and my heart and my history, and the Stones themselves never released it for public purchase. Options..?

As for the JGB, strictly Nicky's tenure, NONE of it was officially recorded and released to buy. You can't buy one note of it. I traded food, thanks, and book acknowledgements in the Kinkaids to the guys out there who'd taped from the soundboard or the audience, putting my pride and need to be invisible on the line and explaining just why I wanted those shows so desperately.

Well - again, options? Besides which, they're all dead: Jerry, Ron Tutt, John Kahn, Nicky. There's no one to send money to. There's no one to enrich. Yes, Garcia's widow (another Deborah) is alive, but they hooked up after that incarnation of the band stopped playing. Even leaving aside the fact that she's spent the years since Jerry's death making it clear that she'd sell used toilet paper with his name on it if she thought she could make another million of it, I don't see her as entitled to it. She came later.

Summation: I agree with your general take on it, and applaud it.

But I spent thirty years heartbroken and putting a scruple over my own soul, and when it comes to Nicky, NOTHING will induce me to do that again.

[lacey]

Bootlegs are different. And things not available anywhere else are different. Neither of those I have problems with, because how else would you get it? I think it's a shame when you have to resort to it, especially when theoretically the bands could work with the bootleggers to bring cuts of dates they've played to the public. Maybe take the recording, bring it to the studio and bring the quality up, and either group the recordings into an album and sell it, or place it on their site for download. Maybe for nothing, maybe for a few bucks. Who knows. Doesn't matter. What does matter is that I have a feeling that a lot of downloading cases are just like yours... the material simply isn't available anywhere else. And that's a shame. Missed opportunity all around.

[debg]

Well, to be fair and honest, if they (the big general "they") took a few of those live shows and cleaned them up and released them, they'd likely be missing most of what I treasure, as much as I treasure the music itself: all that in-between chattering, Nicky talking, joking around, occasionally - very, very occasionally - with me audible. The entire Fairfax show, for instance; I don't think an actual soundboard recording was ever made of that, and that means the only version in existence is the incredibly scratchy and Dolby-proof audience tape that the guy sitting at the table next to ours made of it.

With a tape quality that poor, even digital re-encoding won't help it. It would never be a high enough sound quality for them to sell.

And if they did, you wouldn't hear the three-way buzz and chatter, and Tim at our table saying something to Nicky and then something to me, and my voice, clear as a bell, suddenly ringing out: "I KNOW!"

[lacey]

LOL

Yeah, that's something I didn't consider. That interplay, the random chatter and "I KNOW!" and people hollering random stuff is one of the things I enjoy most about live recorded media. And doesn't that sound like the biggest oxymoron? I know some don't care for it, but I know I like it, and you're right, assuming the material could be cleaned up, chances are that would be lost. Big "do not want" to that.

[debg]

Doubly big "do not want", considering that it was my voice, and my lost angel, and my own history they'd be cleaining away.

[lacey]

I have to wonder how much, in books and music and such, has been lost through the years, in sanitizing things for the masses by removing all the "I KNOW!"s. Bet it's more than we'd think.