The Great White Wonder that is bootlegging

[Analogman]

Rockbeatstone

 

A look at the history and impact of bootlegging on the music industry.

 

Not to be confused with piracy (the illegal sale of material under copyright or existing releases), bootlegging (the distribution of non-released material) has a colourful and crucial impact on modern popular music and the record industry. Without bootlegging, bands such as the Grateful Dead would not have a rightful place in musical history. Without bootlegging, the post-death careers of artists such as Jeff Buckley, Nick Drake and Jimi Hendrix would not have been as extensive or as interesting. Most importantly to the record industry, without bootlegging, they wouldn't have the opportunity to find new material to flog to devoted fans.

 

Great White Wonder The first bootleg of note in the rock world was A Great White Wonder, a release of Bob Dylan tunes that he had been working on with the Band in semi-retirement in Woodstock, after his legendary (and some would say mythical) motorcycle accident in 1966. These tracks were later released by his record company in 1975 as The Basement Tapes. At the time there was an insatiable appetite for new material from Dylan who had disappeared into the ether. Many of his fans who followed each and every utterance from Dylan in the mid 1960s were in despair! This release came at an opportune time and many were probably unawares that this was a bootleg record. Great White Wonder was so named because it came in a white sleeve, with a white label and cover (later reproductions of GWW added useful information such as the name of the record to the cover).

 

Around the same period as GWW other important bootlegs came about, such as Brian Wilson's Smile. This recording survived and became a much talked about record by those in the know. It kept people talking about the famous

[LouieB]

The Great White Wonder was sold from behind the counter at many record stores back in the day....

 

LouieB

[Analogman]

I think I saw one of those on Ebay some years ago - same person was also selling an original pressing of Ten of Swords.

[LouieB]

Unlike Ten of Swords, which would be a real find, the Great White Wonder was a very low tech affair, with rather poor sound. I have a tape of it somewhere. There were serveral versions and all sounded basically like shit....but they did have cool stuff on it that had not been heard before. There were several other associated Dylan boots that were also just white covers with stuff stamped on the cover. All fun, all low tech.

 

Clifton Heylin's book Bootleg is the last word on the subject of bootlegs....a great read and full of good information on the subject.

 

LouieB

[Analogman]

I had that book, Mrs. Peel has it now. It's a great book to learn about the history of this sort of thing.

[LouieB]

Yea, my copy is loaned to Melissa, one of the clerks at Lauries; I need to get it back (I lost my first copy, a nice hardcover version on a vacation to the Black Hills...). Melissa's uncle gave her a couple cartons of LP boots, that she seemed not to know what to do with. Hopefully she read some of the book and realized they were worth keeping rather than putting out on e-bay.

 

LouieB

[Analogman]

Exactly. Mine was hardcover, first edition. Some of friend of mine got it for 5 bucks at some chain bookstore place and gave it to me.

[LouieB]

Yea, I was really pissed. I left it at a motel. It had the dust cover and everything and was pretty cheap used on Amazon or something. The paperback is fine too, but the hardcover is really nice.

 

LouieB