To be clear, we're talking about recordings of - for the most part - LIVE concert performances. Sometimes the band performed live to the venue and piped the soundboard mix out to radio broadcast. Plenty of variations on this process are probable.
"Bootlegs" can be FM radio recordings recorded flawlessly from the airwaves, or have moderate tuning drift. They can be ripped from webstreams made available live once as they were created and then never seen again.
Most live recordings that are not professionally recorded are classified AUD or audience-sourced. The quality of these obviously varies widely, as does the skill required to operate the gear, the gear itself, the quality of the sound-man's mix and other venue circumstances.
Bootlegs are also made with cellphones and feature coughs, sneezes and pocket rustling - when they shut up, stop singing along off-key while missing half the words, and you can actually hear the music. There's even the unfortunate "listen to them dodge security" dropouts in otherwise excellent audience recordings.
In almost all of the online Prince communities I've seen and been part of - there is a heavy pressure not to support the "bootleggers" despite the unusually high quality of studio and soundboard live recordings. They're not unofficial. These are things that had an official purpose and were shared with small groups of people as or just after they were made.
This information is out there. It has been for decades. Uptown Magazine in Sweden published a fanzine about it. (I really wish P hadn't hated Per Nilsen's work so much. His DMSR book was impressive. But P sued Uptown into legal stalemate and Per's work seems to have just stopped.)
Probably the first fanzine I ever saw that wasn't for Star Trek was for Prince. He started his own (or gave official sanction to one that started independently - I don't have the earliest Controversy issues so I can't just check) called Controversy.
By that time I'd grown to prefer Uptown over Controversy for the quality of the information. I also understood that there were competing fanzines for the Beatles and Elvis decades before there were competing forums for Neil Young, Nine Inch Nails, and Pearl Jam.
If Uptown's influence on my insatiable curiosity about the World of Prince weren't enough, there were the bootleg bibles called Hot Wacks that chronicled everything that existed in the 80s on vinyl. From Springsteen to ZZ Top, those books also included a generous portion on Prince.
Record Collector and Goldmine magazines, just to name a couple, regularly featured the kind of detailed work they were known for - dedicated to all sorts of artists. Including Prince, and not just in the features.
In 2016 the same information is available on sites like discogs and princevault. Despite hostility from the Prince camp from time to time, the fan community maintains the information and mostly helps each other.
There are two main ways (we'll get to roll-your-own) bootlegs find their way into the hands of the people, the thirsting ears and hearts of the fans who already own all the official stuff and still want more bad enough to seek it out where it is not commonly found.
The "pros" and the "indies" to make a rough distinction.
They have different motives, but there's no way to deny that there are massively passionate people with enormous reverence for the material working on both sides of this divide.
"pros"
Moonraker. Thunderball. Sabotage. Eye. Silverline. Ladybird. Irukandji. Optimum. Superhero. SaTim.
These are the "labels" that - for the most part - are providing high quality source material pressed to silver CDs with excellent glossy cover art and tray liner cards, silkscreened or otherwise printed CD tops. Competing in every way with their corporate counterparts - except in most American corporate-run music stores.
Some of the quality of both the audio and the graphics has made it common rumor among fans that the "pro" bootleg labels are somehow indirectly supplied by someone at Paisley Park. While I might have once thought this reasonable, later years made me think it far less likely than I had in the 1990s.
The downside?
They get $20-$50 per disc when they find themselves a gullible sucker, and more for the multi-disc box sets. I've sniped a few at the lowest end of the price range, but never felt very good about it. Nothing like the wide-eyed triumph of my first record convention grabs...
Who knows where the money spent on pro-label bootlegs goes, who gets it, or what they do with it?
In response to this uncertainty, and empowered by the internet's very nature, this led to the...
"independents"
Digital Funk Bitch. Fullasoul. 4DaFunk. Free Boot Generation. Confusion. UCI. Brave. Habibi. Camille. Pure Funk. GetBlue. Akashic Records. Enfant Terrible. Foefur. Superball. NewPowerGroovez. Fun With Vinyl / Polyvinyl Acetate. Love or Money. Chaos. Serveitupfrankie.
These are the ones who are doing it free, or intentionally NOT FOR SALE, not to be sold.
If you see any titles from the independent freely-shared groups being sold on ebay or someplace like that, you should report their asses. These release groups are trying to beat the bootleggers at their own game.
I've read several times in different places over the years about small groups of fans in one place or another gathering together to pool their money and buy a rehearsal tape or an uncirculated studio outtake.
This is the history of the independents releasing excellent quality material that is in every way the equal and rival of anything the "pros" have been able to do. The independents regularly source their own material seemingly from nowhere.
Independent bootleg artisans have devoted their resources many times to improving and remastering existing bootlegs that were issued in flawed original condition by the professionals.
There are whole series of remasters and 'retouches' that are a joy to listen to after many years with their inferior predecessors.
I'm still kind of attached to a few of my "pro" label boots, but I'll side with the independents any time, as I believe this is where the majority of the talent and the creativity lie. Not to mention the future...
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To take this into my personal relationship with the material for a minute, I've never been the same since hearing the lyric to Partyup.
"You're gonna have 2 fight your own damn war!
We don't wanna fight no more!"
I don't care if legend has attributed the song to Morris Day. Doesn't matter who wrote it.
What mattered most to me is that it felt like I could have written it. I certainly clearly felt it.
I've been an anarchist since I found out what it meant.
I remember a kind of high-wire act of nervousness on the day I made it clear to my parents that I would not be a soldier. I might have to register, but I would never be anything other than a conscientious objector if called to serve and fight...
I am with the independents. My coat is a brownish color. This is where my loyalties lie.
If I have sympathy, broadly speaking nine times out of ten it's gonna be for the little guy, the underdog, the downtrodden, the poor, the sick, the needy.
To bring it back to the topic at hand, I'd rather see the community itself share everything they can get their hands on and do it with the express intention of putting the bootleggers out of business.
F the middlemen just out to make a profit. They're not part of the art. They're moneychangers in the temple.
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Yet as a hobby that has begun to resemble a passion, I regularly record concerts I am lucky enough to attend. Reminded of something I saw a user on dimeadozen say, "It's just a memory if you don't record it."
I was in the concert choir at college and one of the tenors recorded every performance on a little dictaphone in his pocket. I dubbed a show at the end of the semester from doc's cassette, but I wish I had more of our concerts saved somewhere.
The act of smuggling in a device and making an audience recording might seem like a crime to some, but I still consider it to be a defiant act of defending my own memory. If I were unlucky enough to go out like my grandparents did, at least maybe somebody will be nice enough to me in my old age to throw a bunch of concerts I was AT (and recorded my own self) on a nanoSD card, screw it into a pair of earbuds and let me relive my past somehow...
I've been encouraged at the explosion of people younger than myself who took it seriously when encouraged by technology to BECOME the media, and participate in creating something everyday.
The Live Music Archive at archive.org has filled in many gaps from shows I was at but didn't want to bring recording gear, or was too poor and young yet to have afforded to buy any... I've traded tapes and CDs and such to collect radio shows from Rev105 and Soul Coughing.
I've also benefited personally from semi-pro tapers who've recorded legendary Ween concerts, and had the audio and video of those shows really provide solace, escape, and empathy when going through some particularly difficult emotional times.
I support unauthorized recordings of independent origin and their right to continue to exist and be shared freely. I do not support people who try to profit from this.
I make "bootlegs" but I don't even share them. I'm afraid. Chilling effects on culture have done their work on me... Yet I'm not scared of everything. I still find ways to participate, share, seed, and otherwise make sure people have options that aren't paying for this stuff.
A little effort and a little time, just like in the days when all I had to offer was blanks-and-postage, and anything I've been lucky enough to collect should also be yours. Because none of it's mine, it belongs to everybody now. All of it.
I have grown into a philosophy now where I refuse to deny myself something just because of how it came to be. I still buy bootlegs because I once had to resort to trading B&P or buying high-speed dubbed cassettes at record conventions.
I have hunted down silvers for all those cheap dubs that were once all I had. Of course in the decades between then and now I've replaced those tapes several times over. First in low-end mp3 (128k) and then full 320k mp3. Then ape. Then FLAC. Every time they sounded marginally better.
I guess I'm still irritated to see the patriarchal wagging of the finger and tut-tutting at THE org.
If it's out there, it's none of your business how I choose to spend my money and obtain what entertains and inspires me. Yeah, I'd rather the bootleggers didn't exist either. I'd rather there was a strong internet presence by Paisley Park or PRN Enterprises!!
Someday all the things we do in archiving and co-managing the artistic legacy of other songwriter and performing artists - from Neil Young to Ali Farka Toure - doing those diligent, careful things with the art and performances created by Prince - this will also be normalized.
No longer whispered about as if illegal. We reject that crass, dismissive, ignorant interpretation.
We can finally come out of the 'scared of being sued into debtor's prison' closet we've been hiding in and join the rest of the internet appreciating this incredible musical art out in the wide world of freedom with our heads free of worry and held high like everybody else...
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