Tom Stevens on bootlegs (October 1999 issue of Live! Music Review) R.I.P., Brother

 

Bootlegs

By Tom Stevens

Bootlegs. I love ‘em. It’s August of 1971 again, I’m 14, at a music camp at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. I’m walking hand in hand into a record store near the campus with Laura Berry, a beautiful, frizzy light brown-haired violinist from Fort Wayne I’d just met. On a wire rack to the right of the counter was a rack of bootlegs. James Taylor, Cat Stevens. Yeesh, I thought, folk’s sure getting popular. I wound up purchasing a Jimi Hendrix record and leaving, no doubt to engage in more pleasures of the 14-year-old flesh with my new sweetie Laura.

Hearing the same records over and over got boring. The thought of hearing my faves in the raw was a welcome promise when I first read about the existence of bootleg LPs in Hit Parader magazine. It was about how pissed Led Zeppelin (or their manager) was over their bootlegs.

Later when I was in a band that a lot of people came to see play, I found myself bootlegged. Strange. When you’re listening to other people’ performances on a bootleg, you expect them not to be up to professional standards, which is exactly what intrigued me. Slickness is falsehood, guts are everything.

The buzz I got listening to The Beatles “Kum Back” or the Stones “Live-r Than You’ll Ever Be” was indescribable. Now, while listening to an audience tape of me, I was reminded of the first time I heard a tape of myself talking into a tape recorder at a young age. Like meeting a new person, or in this case, a new band.

I personally allow taping at all my gigs. The last big venue I played there was a sign saying “no taping/no photography” like it was a proprietary thing. Who knows how many brilliant, earthshaking performances have been lost forever over the centuries due to that mindset. Speaking of proprietary, a big moralistic complaint about bootlegs is that the artist sees no money from it. Wrong, bucko.

Canadian radio plays (and subsequent royalty checks) from my unreleased song “Silence” made me release it legitimately on Points Revisited. Through the miracle of bootlegging (or in this case, tape trading) some radio station in Canada was playing my song, and reporting it to MI, who in turn was sending me checks. Go figure.

As I write, The Long Ryders were just honored by their second bootleg and first boot CD. This was taken from a Bottom Line in New York FM broadcast from 1987, at the start of my last tour with them. I thought it was a terrific piece, better than the live BBC disc that was taken from the UK leg of that fateful tour.

The Long Ryders, despite being praised in the press, have up to now never been a cash cow for anyone, so I knew immediately that whoever it was that put out that disc did not consider the profit motive (or lack thereof) but rather, took the risk on sheer love of the music. All I can say is, thanks.

[2021 editor's note: Tom Stevens passed away today. It was completely unexpected as Tom had been active just a day before in a bootleg forum. The CD he refers to in this article was called The End of the Trail (Massive Attack Discs) and it became useful when the Long Ryders released the same show officially years later. From Sid Griffin's website: "A great bootleg CD taken from an FM broadcast of the show at the Bottom Line in New York City on 7th May 1987. This is the very same release as the new official Long Ryders album Three Minute Warnings: The Long Ryders Live In New York City on Prima Records (SID015). However Three Minute Warnings has much, much better sound as it is from the original master tapes. Interestingly enough those original master tapes ran out with some ninety seconds left in the concert so the tail end of 10-5-60 on Three Minute Warnings is actually a digital edit from The End Of The Trail bootleg!]

Happy trails, Tom. It was great to know you.