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QUESTIONS ABOUT LED ZEPPELIN BOOTLEG RECORDINGS


irondirigible

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Whats funny is most of us cant wait for EV to put out 3/21/75. . . It seems to me that someone looked at EV as a great business op and backed them to upgrade their product. . now all these newer shows have slip cases with pretty looking silvers and the prices have gone through the roof. . I love what they do for the live shows. . How most of you in the 70s/80s/90s bought LPs with a half or 3/4 show. . it would drive me crazy. . every time I look to buy an LP it seems most are missing songs and never in any kind of set list order. .I have most shows downloaded but I do like some of the products out there and will continue to buy. .  

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14 hours ago, irondirigible said:

Consider the Mike Millard tapes, like Listen To This Eddie!  Its a great performance, as are many other bootleg recordings, but the sound quality just isn't at the level that you want for an official release.

Really? IMO the "Eddie" recordings' sound quality beats a lot of official live albums. No, there isn't the stereo separation between instruments that you'd find on a multitrack live recording but other than that the overall sound of Millard's recordings are just about on par with most official releases. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Re: Bootlegs . Something odd going on at discogs. A bunch of titles from labels like Godfather, Eat A Peach are being deleted due to "copyright infringement" , whilst Empress Valley and other titles are not affected...yet. Wonder if another boot company (EVSD?) is flagging a bunch of other label's product. Discogs has been very accepting of unofficial live recordings, so it seems odd that all of a sudden so many titles are being yanked. Anyone else notice this? 

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46 minutes ago, porgie66 said:

Re: Bootlegs . Something odd going on at discogs. A bunch of titles from labels like Godfather, Eat A Peach are being deleted due to "copyright infringement" , whilst Empress Valley and other titles are not affected...yet. Wonder if another boot company (EVSD?) is flagging a bunch of other label's product. Discogs has been very accepting of unofficial live recordings, so it seems odd that all of a sudden so many titles are being yanked. Anyone else notice this? 

Just had a nose, looked at Blueberry Hill, some versions have been pulled others have not. It can only be a good thing because of all the rip off merchants with their outrageous prices. I paid £5 for my beige pastel sleeve TMQ red/amber vinyl(s) back in 1973. No way is BH worth any more than £25 these days. You would have to be a fool to pay the £200+ some prick is asking.

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2 minutes ago, JTM said:

Just had a nose, looked at Blueberry Hill, some versions have been pulled others have not. It can only be a good thing because of all the rip off merchants with their outrageous prices. I paid £5 for my beige pastel sleeve TMQ red/amber vinyl(s) back in 1973. No way is BH worth any more than £25 these days. You would have to be a fool to pay the £200+ some prick is asking.

Well, the expensive titles aren't being yanked like premium labels EVSD and Tarantura...it's been the lower budget labels. That's what raises a flag for me that someone is ratting out lower priced alternatives. 

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On 7/10/2017 at 11:33 PM, Nutrocker said:

Really? IMO the "Eddie" recordings' sound quality beats a lot of official live albums. No, there isn't the stereo separation between instruments that you'd find on a multitrack live recording but other than that the overall sound of Millard's recordings are just about on par with most official releases. 

I have to call bullshit on this. The recording from the 21st iof June is fine to listen to, but nowhere near the sonic quality of a good board tape, much less a live release. This is one of those things i keep seeing posted that is just ridiculous. Mike's recording of the 23rd is better sonically than the 21st and so is the show he recorded on the March 11th in 1975. His recording of the 21st is tinny sounding with no resonance from the drums and a lack of bottom end. Not his best recording, not even close. I love the performance and can't wait for the board tape to really hear all the stuff Bonham and Jones are playing.

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Because you've probably listened to 1) commercially released bootleg title, which is EQ'd and brickwalled 2) on modern budget gear, not on high quality analog audio from the past. Try to combine raw 1st gen and some good tube amp and good old speakers, the difference is more than listenable then.

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6 hours ago, zepster1979 said:

It's rather something related to the casual air raid that took place few weeks ago in the EU. The last was in 2014. All the Japanese stuff is still available plus some retired Euro labels too.

EV is getting taken down too. 

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7 hours ago, zepster1979 said:

It's rather something related to the casual air raid that took place few weeks ago in the EU. The last was in 2014. All the Japanese stuff is still available plus some retired Euro labels too.

Casual air raid few weeks ago? Do the EU-clowns want to crucify all bootleg companies again? I thought they should have to deal with bigger issues.........

1 hour ago, porgie66 said:

EV is getting taken down too. 

Every single release of Godfather, Godfatherbox, Eat A Peach, EV & and Tarantura has been blocked. So not only the european bootleg companies.......

Wendy & Graf Zeppelin are not affected yet.

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27 minutes ago, SymphonyX said:

I'm not experiencing any issues with any title and nothing is blocked.   The Search Bar at top of site produces all the results when typing in all those names mentioned.  All links work

Any title of the mentioned bootleg comp. has following mark: This release has been blocked from sale in the marketplace. It is not permitted to sell this item on Discogs.

You can`t sell/buy these titles anymore, also the statistics and the sales history has been removed.

I`m located in Vienna/Austria, maybe only european users are affected?

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50 minutes ago, Autumn Moon said:

Any title of the mentioned bootleg comp. has following mark: This release has been blocked from sale in the marketplace. It is not permitted to sell this item on Discogs.

You can`t sell/buy these titles anymore, also the statistics and the sales history has been removed.

I`m located in Vienna/Austria, maybe only european users are affected?

I live in the US and it's the same. Many titles have been removed and blocked. I've been on discogs for several years and never saw anything like this. Warner must be on the warpath again like they do on eBay... athough titles by other artists are blocked as well. Makes me wonder if some of the bootleg sellers in Japan are flagging titles on discogs to eliminate competition.

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5 hours ago, porgie66 said:

Makes me wonder if some of the bootleg sellers in Japan are flagging titles on discogs to eliminate competition.

Oh no, god forbid, bootleggers would never do anything like that :lol: 

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9 hours ago, Autumn Moon said:

Casual air raid few weeks ago? Do the EU-clowns want to crucify all bootleg companies again? I thought they should have to deal with bigger issues.........

Every single release of Godfather, Godfatherbox, Eat A Peach, EV & and Tarantura has been blocked. So not only the european bootleg companies.......

Wendy & Graf Zeppelin are not affected yet.

I saw it.

 

So, we should expect fast rise of prices, if they will block Ebay, these items will be even more expensive as they won't be available online except for private mailing lists. They've only helped bootleggers to be more luxury trade mark now.

A very adviced move from the authorities :).

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I see now and never used that site.   I'm no expert in this field but just did a simple compare and contrast.  All those names listed don't appear to be Zeppelin exclusive.  They ventured off the Yellow Brick Road and also doing U2, Kiss, Prince, Springsteen, Bowie and a whole barrage of other bands.   I highly doubt Warner is responsible and could be from anywhere on top.    With all the news and estate litigation with Prince, Bowie they probably pissed off someone.

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RE right and wrong, I think there are three issues:

  1. Legal
  2. Moral
  3. Ethical

Legal: It's illegal to sell bootlegs, and in many (most?) cases it's probably also illegal to distribute them, record your own tape at a concert, and so on. But as folks have noted, even Jimmy Page has no problem with fans sharing bootlegs (and presumably he has no problem, at least looking back now, with fans having recorded their own audience tapes at shows back in the day, even though Peter Grant of course did have a major problem with that!). One note, though: I've seen zero evidence that Page ever has bought a bootleg. My understanding is that when he goes into record shops and gets Zep bootlegs, he scoops up whatever he wants for free - it seems to be an unspoken (and often friendly) agreement whereby he takes what he wants in exchange for not prosecuting the record shop owner.

Moral: I agree with the many others who say that freely sharing among fans is right, and selling bootlegs for profit is wrong. HOWEVER...

Ethical: Ethics are more situational and less absolute than morals, and the fact is that many of the best Zep bootleg sources and shows, especially the soundboards, would not be available for fans to share if a bootleg label had not paid money to the original owner in order to get them to let go of it. We can argue until the cows come home about whether the tape owners would have eventually shared their tapes for free if the boot labels hadn't come calling. But given that some tape owners are still hoarding them despite the boot labels having money to pay, and given that some tapes are hoarded because they circulate among collectors whose entire pleasure is having something that no one else has or has heard, my view is that the boot labels are mercenary but are not the cause of the bootleg market. They are just players, even though their motives and tactics are in some respects distasteful.

So from an ethical point of view, it's hard to justify free sharing without also being honest about the fact that by sharing anything that ever originated from a boot label, you are indeed condoning and depending on the bootleg economy. (I stress that I include myself in this). We can say that by helping freely share bootleg releases we are sticking it to the boot labels, but that's delusional IMO - if anything, by sharing boot releases, we're shrinking the pool of buyers, which helps keep bootleg prices high, since they have to recoup their costs and reap all their profits from an ever-smaller pool of buyers.

 

As to sound quality, I have to agree with @irondirigible and @mknopfler: The very best bootlegs still do not sound as polished or clean as an official release. You might have a personal preference for the authenticity and atmosphere of a great audience tape, but that is not the same thing as the audience tape sounding as good as, or better than, an official release. And I'm sorry, but you can hook up all the tube amps and vintage gear you want and while the tubes might add pleasant 2nd-order harmonics and the vintage woofers might mate well with the vibe of a Zep audience tape, it's still not going to sound like an official release.

A two-track tape - whether recorded from the audience, or recorded from the soundboard where the mix is meant to compensate for the sonics of the venue - never is going to sound as good as a multitrack mixdown. 

The closest things we have to direct bootleg-official comparisons are (A) The handful of soundboard tracks from the 6-27-72 Long Beach show compared to HTWWW, and (B) The 10-10-69 Paris bootlegs compared to the official Zep I reissue companion disc. (The Southampton and Royal Albert Hall 1970 bootlegs don't count because they're just leaked professional mixdowns, not bootleg sources.) For (A) the sonic difference is huge. Even if you don't like the mix or mastering of HTWWW, it's a proper multitrack mix, and the 2-channel Long Beach bootleg soundboard snippet simply is not official-release quality. For (B), that's a more interesting case, because the official release sounds much better than many of the bootlegs, but very close to the best-sounding bootleg versions. The reason is that while the source is a multitrack mix, it's one that was done live, on the fly, for FM broadcast, and apparently by a radio engineer who didn't quite know what he was doing. Even then, the official version has more polish, sounds cleaner, and has more consistent volume and overall presentation.

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5 hours ago, tmtomh said:

RE right and wrong, I think there are three issues:

  1. Legal
  2. Moral
  3. Ethical

Legal: It's illegal to sell bootlegs, and in many (most?) cases it's probably also illegal to distribute them, record your own tape at a concert, and so on. But as folks have noted, even Jimmy Page has no problem with fans sharing bootlegs (and presumably he has no problem, at least looking back now, with fans having recorded their own audience tapes at shows back in the day, even though Peter Grant of course did have a major problem with that!). One note, though: I've seen zero evidence that Page ever has bought a bootleg. My understanding is that when he goes into record shops and gets Zep bootlegs, he scoops up whatever he wants for free - it seems to be an unspoken (and often friendly) agreement whereby he takes what he wants in exchange for not prosecuting the record shop owner.

Moral: I agree with the many others who say that freely sharing among fans is right, and selling bootlegs for profit is wrong. HOWEVER...

Ethical: Ethics are more situational and less absolute than morals, and the fact is that many of the best Zep bootleg sources and shows, especially the soundboards, would not be available for fans to share if a bootleg label had not paid money to the original owner in order to get them to let go of it. We can argue until the cows come home about whether the tape owners would have eventually shared their tapes for free if the boot labels hadn't come calling. But given that some tape owners are still hoarding them despite the boot labels having money to pay, and given that some tapes are hoarded because they circulate among collectors whose entire pleasure is having something that no one else has or has heard, my view is that the boot labels are mercenary but are not the cause of the bootleg market. They are just players, even though their motives and tactics are in some respects distasteful.

So from an ethical point of view, it's hard to justify free sharing without also being honest about the fact that by sharing anything that ever originated from a boot label, you are indeed condoning and depending on the bootleg economy. (I stress that I include myself in this). We can say that by helping freely share bootleg releases we are sticking it to the boot labels, but that's delusional IMO - if anything, by sharing boot releases, we're shrinking the pool of buyers, which helps keep bootleg prices high, since they have to recoup their costs and reap all their profits from an ever-smaller pool of buyers.

 

As to sound quality, I have to agree with @irondirigible and @mknopfler: The very best bootlegs still do not sound as polished or clean as an official release. You might have a personal preference for the authenticity and atmosphere of a great audience tape, but that is not the same thing as the audience tape sounding as good as, or better than, an official release. And I'm sorry, but you can hook up all the tube amps and vintage gear you want and while the tubes might add pleasant 2nd-order harmonics and the vintage woofers might mate well with the vibe of a Zep audience tape, it's still not going to sound like an official release.

A two-track tape - whether recorded from the audience, or recorded from the soundboard where the mix is meant to compensate for the sonics of the venue - never is going to sound as good as a multitrack mixdown. 

The closest things we have to direct bootleg-official comparisons are (A) The handful of soundboard tracks from the 6-27-72 Long Beach show compared to HTWWW, and (B) The 10-10-69 Paris bootlegs compared to the official Zep I reissue companion disc. (The Southampton and Royal Albert Hall 1970 bootlegs don't count because they're just leaked professional mixdowns, not bootleg sources.) For (A) the sonic difference is huge. Even if you don't like the mix or mastering of HTWWW, it's a proper multitrack mix, and the 2-channel Long Beach bootleg soundboard snippet simply is not official-release quality. For (B), that's a more interesting case, because the official release sounds much better than many of the bootlegs, but very close to the best-sounding bootleg versions. The reason is that while the source is a multitrack mix, it's one that was done live, on the fly, for FM broadcast, and apparently by a radio engineer who didn't quite know what he was doing. Even then, the official version has more polish, sounds cleaner, and has more consistent volume and overall presentation.

Nice post! 

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On 7/25/2017 at 9:40 AM, zepster1979 said:

Because you've probably listened to 1) commercially released bootleg title, which is EQ'd and brickwalled 2) on modern budget gear, not on high quality analog audio from the past. Try to combine raw 1st gen and some good tube amp and good old speakers, the difference is more than listenable then.

Were you talking to me ?  If so, you couldn't be more wrong. I listen to the unadulterated, closest to the master versions that are available on an over $15,000 sound system. If you are trying to infer that my audio choices are affecting my judgement on whether an audience recording sounds as good as a multitrack recording then I suggest cleaning your ears. Mike Millard's recordings are great for what they are, but they are not the sonic equal of a good soundboard or a professional multitrack recording. A great audience tape is fun to listen to in that you get the overall ambience of the show from the crowd's perspective, a great board tape gives more of the bands perspective - like you are right there on stage with the musicians. Hearing the snare sizzle during a guitar solo from the loud sound on stage and every word spoken among the band clearly, is to me, more interesting than hearing people cheering/screaming. To each his own.

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So you have to stop listening to the bootlegs, mate ;). Of course the difference between great quality audience tape and great quality board tape is more than noticeable  but what did you expect - if you're after a good quality professionally mixed tapes, the only way to get them are the soundboards or few multi-tracks, that's it.

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On 7/10/2017 at 2:56 AM, rm2551 said:

I have another bootleg question....

Does anyone else beside the band potentially (or confirmed) own really good audio and/or video but for a lack of agreement for royalties, or contractual problems, it will remain unreleased? Like a venue/promoter/some other entity owns the sound/audio, like The BBC Sessions - which I believe JP had to negotiate for the rights to release.

I understand Peter Grant would 99.9% of the time absolutely dodge this very scenario. Is there that 0.1% instance?

I don't know about Zeppelin specifically, but I wouldn't be surprised. I've read a lot of stories about things not getting released because of all of the legal hassles, permissions, etc. Some things would never get heard if it weren't for bootlegs. 

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7 hours ago, TMOQ said:

I don't know about Zeppelin specifically, but I wouldn't be surprised. I've read a lot of stories about things not getting released because of all of the legal hassles, permissions, etc. Some things would never get heard if it weren't for bootlegs. 

I'd have to say I would be surprised. Even though it would indicate Peter Grant in some capacity, at some point, failed to secure rights to something he otherwise was always able to, I still think it's possible.

No other replies. Either no one knows, or one cares. Or are there one or two members in here that know more but it's not for public consumption.... :unsure:

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Ebay is awash with bootlegs, some pro-sellers offer nothing but.    I could never work out what Ebay was trying to achieve, they closed my selling "privilege" permanently for selling parts of my personal collection but let others operate with impunity, guess there are more fees to be made from high volume sellers and it looks good to shut down the small guy.     All of that said I hope Discogs and Ebay remain a source, they can be useful for physical collectors such as myself.

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30 minutes ago, jbrum77634 said:

Ebay is awash with bootlegs, some pro-sellers offer nothing but.    I could never work out what Ebay was trying to achieve, they closed my selling "privilege" permanently for selling parts of my personal collection but let others operate with impunity, guess there are more fees to be made from high volume sellers and it looks good to shut down the small guy.     All of that said I hope Discogs and Ebay remain a source, they can be useful for physical collectors such as myself.

I'm in the same boat with you. Everytime I see new listings from high volume sellers it pisses me off. Total double standard. They must scapegoat a few sellers from time to time to appease the VROs . There are so many sellers that do high volume bootleg sales for years on eBay. It's not like they'd be hard to find and shut down. Discogs was at least another market for individuals to buy and sell from their private collection but now that's going away. 

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