“Most artists rail against such bootlegged
"publicity," saying that they alone should determine what music
reaches the public. Bootlegs are "outrageous," says Mr. Dylan in the
liner notes of his new anthology. "You're just sitting and strumming in a
motel, you don't think anybody's there . . . and it appears on a bootleg
record. . . . Then you wonder why most artists feel so paranoid." (as cited in Zazslow 1896).
While researching bootlegging
and piracy I found two very interesting articles on tapers and taping.
The first article ‘Tapers’ at the Grateful Dead Concerts
Spread the Audio Sacrament’ by Joe Coscarelli and published in The New
York Times on 5 July, 2015 tells of a fan’s story of being an approved taper at
The Grateful Dead’s farewell concerts. Despite the evolution of mobile phones,
digital cameras and YouTube there seems to be a traditional kind of bootlegging/taping culture that has survived the digital age. These activities have been approved by
the band for several decades.
The second article “It Doesn't Disturb The Dead at All That Tapers Abound…But Clandestine Recording, A Rage With Rock Fans, Annoys Most Performers” by Jeffrey Zaslow from The Wall Street Journal was written in 1986 over thirty years ago before the evolution of a range of digital technologies, the Internet and YouTube.
The article discusses The Grateful Dead’s decision to allow music fans to tape, record and distribute bootlegged recordings of their concerts with their approval. The article focuses on the advantages and disadvantages of taping, the artist’s and musician’s rights to distribute their music when they choose, the impact on sales of albums, the poor sound of some bootleg recordings and the invasion of privacy. The article distinguishes between bootleggers that record and sell to make money to true tapers who were only interested in trading.
One of the tapers used taping as an excuse that they were recording performers such as Bruce Springsteen in concerts interacting with fans in an era that has since long gone. Today, nearly thirty years on Bruce Springsteen in still a musician whose interactions with the fans at concerts is legendary. Bruce Springsteen and his fandom has been discussed in considerable detail by fans, fandom observers, in books and made into documentaries by respectable movie directors.
In 1986 many musicians and
artists and their recording studios didn’t like taping or bootlegging and were
worried about the trend set by The Grateful Dead. Many musicians and artists
don’t like it today. Despite the fact it was recognised by tapers and fans that
musicians and artists did not like their concerts recorded and went to
great lengths and cost to prevent it, many so called tapers and fans put their
own needs first and went ahead and recorded it anyway. I
guess for these tapers and fans there is the element of the thrill of chase to get that recording, which
still drives bootleggers and pirates at concerts today.
In another interesting
article from Billboard.com reported The Grateful Dead’s final concerts and
merchandising in July last year probably netted the band over $52 million dollars, a nice retirement fund. For many musicians and artists however, it is
difficult to say what impact tapers and bootleggers have had on their ability
to make money from their music and the music industry as whole today.
The articles have been edited
for copyright reasons and circulated on my Google + page in full for those
interested.
‘Tapers’ at the Grateful Dead Concerts Spread the
Audio Sacrament’ by Joe Coscarelli published in The New York times on 5 July, 2015. (no copyright infringement intended)
"CHICAGO — Between his first Grateful Dead show in
1988, at the age of 15, and the death of Jerry Garcia in 1995, William Walker
saw the band about 130 times, a modest number in the Deadhead universe. But Mr.
Walker has experienced many, many more of the band’s concerts through his
passion for live audience taping, collecting thousands of cassettes and
terabytes-worth of digital audio, while also contributing his own recordings to
the seemingly endless archive…
Although there would be fewer than three dozen approved
bootleggers in what’s known as the taper’s section each night in a crowd of
more than 70,000, it wouldn’t be a Dead show without them. Not content to
relive the performances via the on-demand, high-quality video streams available
immediately, the concert replays from local and satellite radio, or the band’s
own commemorative 12-CD, seven-DVD box set, scheduled for release this fall,
tapers like Mr. Walker still — in 2015 — insist on doing it themselves, for
reasons both practical and traditional…
Officially approved for noncommercial recording by the
Grateful Dead since the early 1980s, tapers are a subculture within a
subculture — spreaders of audio sacrament among a famously evangelical
following. While the band never matched the record sales of its classic-rock
peers, the Dead thrived as a freewheeling live act thanks in part to a
word-of-mouth trade network of concert recordings, a system it passed down to
its spiritual children such as Phish and Widespread Panic…
Even as its necessity has faded, with bands like Phish
offering a free MP3 download of every show to attendees straight from the
venue’s soundboard, the seemingly archaic hobby has thrived thanks to
technological advances. Most tapers switched to digital recording in the ’90s —
although there was at least one analog holdout at Soldier Field, Mr. Walker
said — and sites like etree.org , taperssection.com and the Live Music
Archive, part of the archive.org offer
meticulously organized, easily downloadable databases….
Mr. Whitney added that while the Dead’s studio albums
are “decent enough, they don’t really capture the sound quality of the live
experience.”
It’s all about the ambience, Mr. Walker concurred:
“There are some recordings of shows where you can almost feel how hot the room
was. That just doesn’t transfer to a soundboard recording.”
Yet he knows it’s a dying art. “It’s built on this
culture of sharing,” he said of taping. “Younger people don’t really understand
the effort that people put into it, and that’s a bummer.”…
“It Doesn't Disturb The Dead at All That Tapers Abound…But
Clandestine Recording, A Rage With Rock Fans, Annoys Most Performers.” By Jeffrey Zaslow published on July 11, 1986. (no copyright infringement intended)
CHICAGO—David J. shuffles into Park West, a rock
concert hall, unnoticed among all the other ticket-holders. No one frisks him
or sees the microphone concealed in his sleeve. No one sees the tape deck
strapped under his flannel shirt. No one suspects he is a veritable two-legged
recording studio.
Social worker by day, bootleg-tape maker by night, he
is here to illegally record Dickey Betts, a guitarist formerly with
the Allman Brothers band. Eventually, he will funnel copies of the
cassette to an underground network of rock 'n' roll collectors who eagerly
barter their clandestine recordings for his.
With 1,500 concert tapes in his collection, David J.
is a hot trader. Looking for the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia playing
a Jewish Community Center in 1962? He has it. Chuck Berry stopping by to jam at
a Chicago Blues bar in 1984? He has a tape of that, too. "I'm a music
lover," he says. "I'm an archivist."
He is also a criminal, record companies insist.
Granted, fans who trade tapes among themselves aren't as troublesome as the
unsavory sorts who cut bootleg albums for profit. But even seemingly harmless
tape-traders hurt record sales and infringe on artists' rights, record labels
say. And the problem is getting worse: As tape recorders improve and get
smaller, more fans are smuggling equipment into concerts. "Short of
erasing tapes by putting electromagnets over every {arena} exit, taping can't
be prevented," says Dennis McNally, a spokesman for the Grateful
Dead.
Seeing no other recourse, the Dead has become the
first major act to indulge its bootleggers: Fans, known as
"Deadheads," may record shows from an assigned section they call
"Tapers' City."
"When we're done with it, you can have it,"
says Mr. Garcia of his band's music. But with its huge cult following, the Dead
has spawned a taping frenzy that worries other artists. Shows by the Dead have
become a meeting ground for pirates, a chance for them to plot their
bootlegging ventures.
At the Dead's recent outdoor concert in Palo Alto,
Calif., several hundred bootleggers, some with $2,000 in equipment, congregated
on an assigned hillside. These were high-tech hippies—with "Make Tapes,
Not War" bumper stickers—and they have built a crowded forest of
seven-foot-tall microphone stands. A presidential press conference doesn't
attract so many wires and mikes.
Willie Babkowski, a 31-year-old machinist, traveled
all the way from New Jersey to tape the concert. He already had 400 hours of
Dead shows on tape, yet he was hungry for more. "I want a keepsake that I
was here," he said. "I'm like the girl who saves the corsage after
the prom."
Better than a dead flower, a Dead tape has lasting
value. It preserves songs and guitar riffs that might go unnoticed during a
concert, said taper Greg Clark: "People get stoned; they may not
remember." A 27-year-old cardiology technician from Houston, Mr. Clark appreciates
the Dead's "tolerance" of tapers. "At other concerts, I'm always
worried about being busted," he said. "Here, I can relax."
The mood was far different, however, when Joe
Jackson recorded a live album last January at a New York theater. Guards
searched handbags and frisked all 500 ticket-holders, turning up scores of tape
machines in the process. Still, some tapers made it through. That's why five
plainclothes guards sat in the balcony with binoculars. "You see certain
jerky movements—at the end of a song someone looks in his lap—and it's a
giveaway," said Frank Enfield, who was Mr. Jackson's tour
manager. He confiscated tapes and held recorders until the end of the show.
As tapers get craftier, even seemingly innocent
concertgoers are suspect. At a David Bowie concert in Japan, one
woman kept waving a stuffed teddy bear at the singer. Authorities got
suspicious, apprehended the bear, and found a microphone inside.
One taper says he dismantles his equipment, has
friends smuggle in various pieces, then rebuilds in the men's room. Another has
his mother sneak the goods inside. ("Security won't check a mother,"
he says.) And Jonathan Creighton, a computer programmer from
Berkeley, Calif., says he hopes to tape a Bob Dylan concert by
transmitting radio signals from a cordless mike to a recorder outside the
arena.
Some traders print and circulate their own catalogs,
listing their collections, from Elvis Presley to Elvis Costello. Some
even swap directories with bootleggers overseas. Looking for Linda
Ronstadt's 1979 tour of Japan? There's a Japanese trader whose catalog
lists it under "L" for Linda Lonstadt.
But there are hazards to cataloging: You may get
called by "a trader" who claims to be seeking Bruce Springsteen
tapes. "After you say you have the tapes he wants, he says, 'I work for
Springsteen. Cease and desist or we'll take you to court,'"
says Netta Gilboa, a Chicago trader. (Mr. Springsteen's management
won't comment on its tactics.)
Though there is a certain adventure to bootlegging, traders
say they aren't troublemakers and never sell tapes. No matter: Copyright laws
don't distinguish bartering from selling, and willful infringement calls for
statutory damages as high as $50,000.
Fanatically devoted to their favorite bands, traders
also argue that they buy all legitimate releases anyway. And they dismiss
charges that friends with access to their tapes buy fewer albums.
"Record companies and artists owe me money,"
snaps taper John Buckvold, a Chicago teacher. "They're getting
free publicity from people like me who promote artists by trading them."
Most artists rail against such bootlegged
"publicity," saying that they alone should determine what music
reaches the public. Bootlegs are "outrageous," says Mr. Dylan in the
liner notes of his new anthology. "You're just sitting and strumming in a
motel, you don't think anybody's there . . . and it appears on a bootleg
record. . . . Then you wonder why most artists feel so paranoid."
Performers are most fearful that tapes of rehearsals
will reach the public. "It's like having your picture taken when you first
wake up in the morning," says Mary Lee Ryan, an entertainment
attorney in Los Angeles.
Artists have the right to expect that their music goes
public "without blemishes," addsRobert Altshuler, a spokesman
for CBS Records. (CBS briefly pulled its advertising from Rolling
Stone after the magazine's recent report about a bootlegged Dylan anthology.)
Artists also fear that poor-quality tapes will make
even their best music sound awful. Too often, tapes are marred by such sounds
as a bootlegger zipping up his jacket. "Or every couple of seconds you'll
hear a heartbeat because someone had his recorder strapped around his
neck," says Stewart Levy, a lawyer whose firm represents Mr.
Springsteen and Billy Joel.
Yet traders say that even muddy bootlegs are worth
saving, because these tapes often show an artist's evolution. One popular
Springsteen bootleg was recorded in Toronto in 1975. The singer had just
appeared on the covers of Newsweek and Time in the same week, and some people
were dismissing him as a minor talent with a major promotional effort behind
him.
At the start of the tape, people are heard shouting,
"Bring on the hype! The man from Time magazine!" One bootlegger who
has the tape explains: "They were all laughing at Springsteen. But then he
played this passionate version of 'Thunder Road,' and when he finished, there
was thunderous applause. The guys who made the tape later said they were blown
away by that first song. They realized Springsteen was worth every bit of
hype."
Another classic Springsteen bootleg is a show he did
in Wisconsin in 1975. A bomb scare interrupted the concert for several hours.
When he returned, he was laughing and slurring his words—fans assumed he had
been drinking. (Sobriety is a Springsteen hallmark.) When he played Wisconsin
again in 1984, he joked with the audience about the 1975 concert. For real
fans, the 1975 and 1984 bootlegs, as a pair, are priceless classics.
The best bootlegs capture the mood of a concert and
the spirit of a performer in ways studio releases never could. Until recent
tours, Mr. Springsteen loved to wander into his audiences. So how wild was his
1978 concert at the University of Notre Dame? Listen to the tape. In the middle
of a song, in the midst of a screaming crowd, the singer pleads: "Will the
girl who's biting my leg please get back?"
"People used to go nuts when he walked into the crowd," one tape-trader reminisces. "Now he can't do that anymore. But all the excitement and all the energy of those days is captured in that one line. And I've got it on tape."
