I don’t know if you recall but in the mid-70s bootlegs had a real cache as illicit but desirable records. They were talked about in hushed tones. Almost as though they were illegal drugs. What’s more, the main source of them were badly printed lists from mail order companies which you’d have to send a postal order to.
Not that I could afford them. They seemed very expensive to me and I was about building the collection and I had to avoid blowing what money I had on an expensive bootleg but even so I wanted them without really realizing that many of them would have been recorded from the audience with a hand held microphone while others were taken from the soundboard, so were of variable quality.
They just all seemed so glamorous, recorded in places far, far away. The Grand Ballroom in Detroit, Santa Monica Auditorium, El Paradiso, Amsterdam. aThe fact that they were recorded illegally didn’t spoil it, quite the reverse. And what those managers like Peter Grant who hated them, never understood was that they only existed because fans loved the band and wanted more product than what was released. It was also unfiltered which is what I think Grant was concerned about because they’d capture the group on a bad night. But of course fans understood that because they heard the good nights too.
It is the ultimate irony that bands or labels have relied on the very same bootlegs or radio broadcasts to put together box sets of archive material. In many ways, they remain an aural documentation of rock's golden age. A record of gigs which would have evaporated into the night but for some enterprising soul with a tape recorder.
Those 70s bootlegs are now quite valuable and I still can’t afford them. They have acquired a cache, especially the individually drawn cover art. Even despite so many live shows being available one way or another in various formats.
