DS/MK Bootlegs sold in ordinary music shops

[dustyvalentino]

As far as I'm aware it is always illegal.
My brother worked in a record store for years and they would never stock an unofficial release. Obviously some did.....in order to make money and probably presuming record labels and bands wouldn't patrol every record store on earth in order to catch out the rare instances of a bootleg being sold.
I do know artists would go to Notting Hill markets in London and confiscate cassette bootlegs in the 70's and 80's.

A recording is a permanent record. So as an artist you don't want to release recordings from a gig where your guitar was out of tune for a couple of songs, or you had a nightmare show because the monitoring was bad....etc...etc.....
Before the iPhone, concerts were fleeting affairs. Any mistake or tech issues came and went in the blink if an eye.A Dire Straits bootleg is like a novel that hasn't quite been finished, with grammatical errors and spelling mistakes, or a rough cut of a movie that is 2.5 hours long instead of 1.5 hours. That goes for every artist.
Of course, completist fans love to hear the 'work in progress', but it's no surprise that music artists (and novelists and film makers) don't want anyone to see or hear their creative product until it is FINISHED.

Thanks Chris!. Also from my perspective as a fan, the bootlegs are almost like gems, they offer different versions of the songs (even new unknown songs if we were lucky), different solos, different performances that overall would never see the light of day, because as you say the finished product would probably be error free or "perfect" in a general sense. Your point is spot on with the one that I posted, the Zurich 92´ bootleg, because it was low quality and DS/MK and the management behind them would NEVER had released such a product. The shop I bought it in (FONA), was the largest supply chain in the country for CD/LP´s at the time, so impressive that they got it sneaked in.       
   

For my part I am SO glad BL’s exist, especially of the NHB’s tours ( and visual) and I completely get what Peter is saying…..it all comes back to being a true fan... ..the “adventure" of it I've referred to before.

As far as I'm aware it is always illegal.
My brother worked in a record store for years and they would never stock an unofficial release. Obviously some did.....in order to make money and probably presuming record labels and bands wouldn't patrol every record store on earth in order to catch out the rare instances of a bootleg being sold.
I do know artists would go to Notting Hill markets in London and confiscate cassette bootlegs in the 70's and 80's.

A recording is a permanent record. So as an artist you don't want to release recordings from a gig where your guitar was out of tune for a couple of songs, or you had a nightmare show because the monitoring was bad....etc...etc.....
Before the iPhone, concerts were fleeting affairs. Any mistake or tech issues came and went in the blink if an eye.A Dire Straits bootleg is like a novel that hasn't quite been finished, with grammatical errors and spelling mistakes, or a rough cut of a movie that is 2.5 hours long instead of 1.5 hours. That goes for every artist.
Of course, completist fans love to hear the 'work in progress', but it's no surprise that music artists (and novelists and film makers) don't want anyone to see or hear their creative product until it is FINISHED.

I always considered that, obviously they are illegal, but they are like a biography of a band, and usually is the only way for fans to know how concerts of a band were during all his career, how songs evolved, came and went out, etc etc etc. Let's say it's an unauthorised biography but a very loyal to reality one.

And also, in the end, doesn't harm anyone as, like MK always say, people who buy bootlegs already have the official stuff.

he big record co’s and organisations like the IFPI/BPI etc justifiably saw the mass pirating of their artists as a problem. I mean organised, drug related, mafia type operations ( which certainly went on).
We are talking about something a bit different here I think, though the idea that Woolworths ( RIP) might stock illegal bootlegs ( they didn't) would certainly have bothered me back then.
Like most of us I have an ambivalent view of how it’s gone.
I haven’t PAID for music in years.
Ah yes, the Sage of Chelsea and he is/was correct…good listener 🤪.

As far as I'm aware it is always illegal.
My brother worked in a record store for years and they would never stock an unofficial release. Obviously some did.....in order to make money and probably presuming record labels and bands wouldn't patrol every record store on earth in order to catch out the rare instances of a bootleg being sold.
I do know artists would go to Notting Hill markets in London and confiscate cassette bootlegs in the 70's and 80's.

A recording is a permanent record. So as an artist you don't want to release recordings from a gig where your guitar was out of tune for a couple of songs, or you had a nightmare show because the monitoring was bad....etc...etc.....
Before the iPhone, concerts were fleeting affairs. Any mistake or tech issues came and went in the blink if an eye.A Dire Straits bootleg is like a novel that hasn't quite been finished, with grammatical errors and spelling mistakes, or a rough cut of a movie that is 2.5 hours long instead of 1.5 hours. That goes for every artist.
Of course, completist fans love to hear the 'work in progress', but it's no surprise that music artists (and novelists and film makers) don't want anyone to see or hear their creative product until it is FINISHED.

And yet, the Basel 1992 bootleg which is a direct capture of a live radio broadcast is a more satisfying listen than the On The Night album that poor Guy spent months tweaking... BY FAR!

Yep.

[dustyvalentino]

As far as I'm aware it is always illegal.
My brother worked in a record store for years and they would never stock an unofficial release. Obviously some did.....in order to make money and probably presuming record labels and bands wouldn't patrol every record store on earth in order to catch out the rare instances of a bootleg being sold.
I do know artists would go to Notting Hill markets in London and confiscate cassette bootlegs in the 70's and 80's.

A recording is a permanent record. So as an artist you don't want to release recordings from a gig where your guitar was out of tune for a couple of songs, or you had a nightmare show because the monitoring was bad....etc...etc.....
Before the iPhone, concerts were fleeting affairs. Any mistake or tech issues came and went in the blink if an eye.A Dire Straits bootleg is like a novel that hasn't quite been finished, with grammatical errors and spelling mistakes, or a rough cut of a movie that is 2.5 hours long instead of 1.5 hours. That goes for every artist.
Of course, completist fans love to hear the 'work in progress', but it's no surprise that music artists (and novelists and film makers) don't want anyone to see or hear their creative product until it is FINISHED.

And yet, the Basel 1992 bootleg which is a direct capture of a live radio broadcast is a more satisfying listen than the On The Night album that poor Guy spent months tweaking... BY FAR!

Bootlegs are more loyal to what a live concert is, and both Basel and Nimes broadcasts are favourites against OTN which sounds over produced and unnatural.

But commercially releases need that standard as a product, while bootlegs are fresh and loyal to the real thing.

Yep x 2. You know my views re OTN ( versus, say, Alchemy which was recorded in way more bootleg conditions…way more SWEAT and  less deodorant.)

Which real thing.
Live shows change every time they are performed.
A studio record is designed to be a historic document played over and over for many years. A live show is an immediate experience, begi=un then gone in two hours.
the problem with cell phones and bootleg recordings is that artists start playing safe, stop pushing the envelope, experimenting.
You used to be able to do warm up shows before tours, now everything goes global a few hours after the show (Youtube).
This IS the point - the audience, the fan loses, because artists play it safe every time they lay live now.
It is a fact and has been happening for at least ten years now.

Correct 100%. Technology has unintentionally removed the SOUL of too many performances.

Which real thing? The one that happens on stage, the one that people at the gig lives.

That's why fans gets multiple bootlegs, to enjoy the differences between each gig, the real thing that happens every night.

The Real Thing were a great UK soul/vocal group who MK used on his production Of Tina’s “ Paradise Is Here” written by Paul Brady.

I know what 'fans' want, I'm just pointing out the negative aspect of it - for the fans.
It is meant to be ephemeral. A fleeting moment that we all share together, band and audience. Once you record it it changes. And what has ACTUALLY happened is that bands have started playing safe, not pushing the envelope and not experimenting.

Nothing to add. He’s right.

[dustyvalentino]

I know. I was answering the point about why bands didn't like bootlegs, why they weren't sold in shops and why they weren't more widely available. Using the cell phone revolution as an ultimate example of the negative of allowing permanent access to what is meant to be an in-person moment between musicians and audience.
No, playing it safe isn't a choice? Have you ever done anything creative - taken a photograph, drawn a picture, recorded a song demo and not wanted anyone to see or hear it and comment before you were happy with it? It's human nature.
Personally, I have seen live clips on Youtube and seen hundreds of comments below the video saying how bad the playing is, or how out of tune the singing is, etc, etc... So that's why artists don't like it.
Again, you 'can ignore it' but it's not human nature.
Artists also like to control the quality of the recording. Bootlegs are either hand held recorder (by audience member), or a feed off the desk, neither of which produces an accurate or best quality audio copy of what you heard in your seat at the show.

I agree with what Chris is saying from HIS perspective but if I was managing NOW 🤮 I would adopt exactly the same position as I used to ( missionary).
Yes I know the very act of bootlegging has changed, phones etc …but let the audience do what the fuck it wants and if the musicians don't like fine let them find someone who can stop it.
That person does not exist.

"...neither of which produces an accurate or best quality audio copy of what you heard in your seat at the show"

There is one exception. MK concerts recorded and sold officially after the concert. (Five concert tours) 

And do that as well.

MK concerts recorded and sold officially after the concert.

Which then obviously aren't bootlegs, or unofficial in any way.

This is like watching a game of chess!  Hilarious 👅

MK concerts recorded and sold officially after the concert.

Which then obviously aren't bootlegs, or unofficial in any way.

Yes, I didn't think about bootlegs

Knight to Bishop. Checkmate I think.

I know there’ll be more of this but that’s my take.
One other thing.
Unspoken but I think alot of artists didn't like bootlegs because their performances might be SO bad ( and consistently so) that they didn’t want to get “ found out ” ( pre auto tune etc).
I'm sure we’ve all see performances by artists we admire/collect that were truly appalling , I mean mind bogglingly so. Bob Dylan anyone?

[Pottel]

on that last note, the Dylan bit, i have multiple, and i mean multiple (ok, gotta check now before i make a statement) 2727+ recordings of Dylan in some form or another, and as much asi t contains truly horrible performances, there are also quite A LOT of great performances, where the voices does not put one off from the performance and where his band performs as stellar as they mostly do.
i do have to say artists like MK and Gilmour are WAY more consistent in their perfomances.

[Chris W]

Ed and I are (as usual) in full agreement.
All I would add is that yes, right from the days of VHS and cassette-radios, if you were being recorded or filmed for local tv or radio, you KNEW it was going to be copied and distributed worked wide.
The only difference now is that it isn't one or two people bothering to copy something iff tv, it's a few hundred people filming you at every gig and it's instantly uploaded.
I saw Paul McCartney's warm up gig (in Frome) the night before his last Glastonbury appearance. We were all asked (going in) not to bring our phones out, let alone video or photograph. There are a coupe of thousand people attending and no one did. I don't think I've ever seen an unauthorised photo or video from that gig.
Touring with The The recently, Matt asked people not to film. For the most part people obeyed his request.
It's MORE than not wanting to see your show uploaded to Youtube with shaky camera work and poor quality sound. It's actually disappointing putting your heart and soul into a live performance only to see most of the audience looking at their cell phone, making sure it's in focus and the audio is recording. I have done shows like this and instead of connecting with thousands of human faces, you are looking at thousands of iPhones. It is NOT great.

[Robson]

"You know my views re OTN ( versus, say, Alchemy which was recorded in way more bootleg conditions…way more SWEAT and  less deodorant.)

Fantastic comment Ed But many of us will defend On The Night, because for many of us this is where the real with DS adventure begins 

I would never have thought that I would live to see the time that I would receive answers from the musicians of my beloved band. Thanks Chris, thanks Ed

[Klaus74]

I have bought many of that CD-Sets by Dire Straits back in the early 1990 in Germany in various record-shops, incl. the Media-Markt departementstores. Much of them were made in Italy, Luxembourg and so on. Yes, in a special time-span, those discs were legally available between the official stuff in the cd-shelfs. I´m not sure to 100 percent, but it can be, that the copyright laws changed somewhere in the 1990 and "over night" all of those discs dissapeared from the record-stores. Now they are be found on record-fairs, sometime on fleamarkets or thrift-stores with many luck and it is "dangerous" to sell them on the well known online marketplaces, especially in Germany, because there are some specialized lawyers, who are searching for those records systematically. It can be very very expensive, to sell such discs, now. Most of such records on the CD format or on vinyl are in the hands of the collectors.

[Chris W]

I have bought many of that CD-Sets by Dire Straits back in the early 1990 in Germany in various record-shops, incl. the Media-Markt departementstores. Much of them were made in Italy, Luxembourg and so on. Yes, in a special time-span, those discs were legally available between the official stuff in the cd-shelfs.

I can't remember a time when bootlegs were legally available. Certainly record companies have waged a 70 year war on unauthorised releases and copies. Ed is right, bands and management didn't have the time or resources to chase down illegal releases, and many bands didn't really care one way or another.
I played a show in LA in November. Waking around outside I came across multiple guys selling unauthorised t-shirts and merchandise. I mentioned it to our official (tour) merchandise seller and he said he wouldn't be trying to stop them as he didn't want to get knifed.

[Jules]

I remember an italian law from Mussolini time, that allowed bootlegs, as far as the record company put a certain amount of money per copy in an accounnt, supposedly for the owner of the rights, and as far as I recall, if in x time nobody claimed for that money, they get it back, thats the reason why many bootleg record companies were operating from Italy in the 90's.

If anyone remember this story more accurately than I, please correct me.

[Klaus74]

Hi Chris, hi Jules. Interesting facts. The sale of unofficial T-shirts after concerts is very remarkable. In Cologne for example on the ground of the well known "Lanxess-Arena",  also known as "Köln-Arena" are some sings, printed with an explicit note, that it is forbidden to sell such articles on the ground of the concert-venue. I saw such unofficial shirts in Germany in the past on many concerts, for example at Springsteen-shows, David Gilmour-shows and also on some Mark Knopfler-gigs. To my opinion, the sellers are very well organized, and they have shirts in various sizes.
As far as i can recall, in the years between 1990 - 1993, i have found many bootleg-cds in the regular stores. After 1993 around, they disappeared from the stores.
Interesting fact with the Italian laws. Never heard about that.

[dustyvalentino]

I bought a fake programme at a Prince gig. It might have been the first gig I ever went to so I was pretty naive, 14 years old. Quite annoying.

[Chris W]

Obviously people are buying bootleg merchandise because it's cheaper than the official stuff.

[ds1984]

Obviously people are buying bootleg merchandise because it's cheaper than the official stuff.

Hum hum

When I started buying vinyl Bootleg a single LP was costing 50% more than an official LP and a double bootleg LP was almost twice the price a single bootleg LP.

To give you figure converted into euro, an official LP was €12, a single bootleg Lp was €18 and a bootleg double Lp was €34.
But the music on these was LIVE!!!
And you got some full show uncut.   

[JF]

Obviously people are buying bootleg merchandise because it's cheaper than the official stuff.

Hum hum

When I started buying vinyl Bootleg a single LP was costing 50% more than an official LP and a double bootleg LP was almost twice the price a single bootleg LP.

To give you figure converted into euro, an official LP was €12, a single bootleg Lp was €18 and a bootleg double Lp was €34.
But the music on these was LIVE!!!
And you got some full show uncut.

I guess Chris was talking about unauthorised t-shirts ("bootleg merchandise"), not about bootleg records which indeed are far mor expensive than regular stuff

[dustyvalentino]

Obviously people are buying bootleg merchandise because it's cheaper than the official stuff.

In my case it was because I was an idiot kid and didn’t realise it was a bootleg.

Now I’m an idiot adult I rarely buy bootleg merchandise.