Rolling Stones Open Bootleg Archive

The Rolling Stones are making some of their most popular bootlegged shows from the 70s and 80s available for $5 a pop at http://www.stonesarchive.com.

So far there are only three available but you'd be hard pressed to find better recorded live Stones gigs outside of Get Yer Ya Ya's Out.

The oldest is from October 1973 and is called The Brussels Affair.

This is a hot night on the Goats Head Soup tour so we get mainly classic Mick Taylor era tunes like Brown Sugar, Rip This Joint, Street Fighting Man, Happy, Tumblin Dice and one of the most raw and vibrant versions of Midnight Rambler to grace the transom.

You can hear Jagger grunting through the harmonica as he rips out heavy distorted blues riffs, and the speedy jam section is proof of why the Stones were once rated as once of the best live bands out there.

Of course we get incredibly underrated Goats Head Soup material as well. Dancing With Mr D live? Get the hell outa here!

The band actually played (and recorded) two shows on this day in Brussels. This release is the best songs from both gigs. But you can find bootlegs of both shows (search for 'The Complete Brussels Affair') and it's cool to hear the two complete concerts with different set lists.

The second release is from a Los Angeles gig in 1975 and is from the tail end of Ronnie Wood's first tour with the band. This is the tour where they had a bunch of side guys on horns and percussion and also Billy Preston was with them.

You can hear live versions of a lot of these songs on Love You Live from the same tour but because the band didn't know they were being recorded in LA for official release, these versions on the bootleg are more raw and real.

The guitar interplay between Richards and Ron Wood is much tighter. It's like one guitar player, really. Very intertwined. Where Mick Taylor did more soloing over Keith's groove.

Having listened to a lot of Love You Live growing up, it's interesting to hear the songs the Stones played on this tour that were left off that album, like All Down The Line, Angie, an almost eight minute very bluesy Wild Horses and of course Gimmie Shelter. Cool to hear Wood's take on Taylor's parts.

This release, called LA Friday, was really recorded at a Sunday concert. You get the whole thing here - 25 songs including two Billy Preston tunes from when they'd turn the spotlight on him briefly each night.

After this tour the band went to Paris to record Some Girls, so you can imagine the group getting tighter every night on this tour, gearing up for that.

The third release is from the 1982 tour where the Stones officially jumped the shark for me and became a stadium band with huge props and stages and balloons and shit.

Still worth a listen but my least favorite of the bunch.

Mick and Keith talk about these bootlegs in the below videos from the band. As usual Keith has better things to say.

His thoughts on Mick Taylor versus Ronnie Wood and his own role playing with each is really telling. He has great respect for both guitarists and of course has really unique perspectives on each. Some great sound bites there. Enjoy!

One caveat on actually getting these releases off the web: the experience of downloading these songs is not seamless. The Stones partnered with Google in the U.S. and the process of pulling the songs off the Web is not as intuitive as iTunes. Not a deal breaker but something to note.

I had all of these shows on unofficial bootlegs and the sound is far superior as expected on these official releases. In some cases there are more songs and a different order. It's nice to hear these as the Stones meant them to be heard. I hope they continue to issue more shows. At $5 a pop I'd probably buy them all!

T.U.B.E. Bootleg Site Vanishes Again

I noticed a lot of people searching for the TUBE Bootleg site - a great source for bootlegs across the board. Seems like it's been pulled down. This happens from time to time for various reasons.

Usually the service provider freaks out from a threat from the music industry and its lawyers and pulls the site down. Once it gets sorted out, a new site goes up with the same great (legal) bootlegs.

I suggest people go to TUBE's Facebook page, which as far as I can tell has never been taken down. All the links from the page are dead but I bet once the TUBE folks figure it out, this is where they will post a new URL.

Abbey Road Medley Sans Vocals

I am not sure how people get a hold of stuff like this but damn am I glad that they do. Just like the Sgt Pepper deconstructed post I made last year, here is the 16 minute Abbey Road side 2 medley without any vocals. Pretty damn cool if you ask me. Enjoy it at this link (it's a Facebook video - could not find it on YouTube).

T.U.B.E. Bootleg Site Moves Again

I know that a fair amount of my visitors use this blog as a portal to the T.U.B.E. Bootleg site, starting after I posted the new link after it was shut down last time. Well it happened again, and here is the new link.

By the way, I got the new link from the T.U.B.E. Facebook page, so if you need another way to track the site's excellent continuing bootleg collection, become friends with that page.

T.U.B.E. Bootleg Site Vanishes, Shows Up Again, The Sun Shines and Birds Chirp Happily

I noticed today that my favorite bootleg site, T.U.B.E. (stands for 'the ultimate bootleg site') had been taken down. This periodically happens to boot sites but this was a big blow. And based on the spike in traffic to my earlier post on T.U.B.E., it looks like I was not the only one freaking out.

Well, happily, they are back up here and here. And there is a Facebook page too, which I didn't know about. Praise Jesus. Go forth and downloads boots.

Awesome Bootleg Site - T.U.B.E.

Have been spending a lot of time on the weekends poring over the T.U.B.E. bootleg blog. The name of the site is an acronym for "the ultimate bootleg experience" and I have to say that I wholeheartedly agree.

There are more than 2,000 bootlegged concerts on the site - everyone from Rush to Floyd, Yes, The Who, Audioslave, U2, R.E.M., and even Willie Nelson. And they add new ones every day or two.

The way it works is that you find the show that you want, click on the download link and you are sent to a service called Rapidshare. You can download shows for free but the service runs intentionally slowly with many limitations, to encourage full subscription. But if you pay a few bucks for a full subscription, the download times are faster and you can grab as many downloads at the same time as your pipeline can handle.

If you want to try it for free here are the steps:

--Click the 'download' link for the bootleg you want; the Rapidshare page opens
--Click 'free user'
--Click 'download,' then 'save' or 'open.' You receive a text file with information about the bootleg. In that text file are links to Rapidshare urls where you'll access the actual audio files, in compressed WinRAR format. When uncompressed, most gigs are already in MP3 format, pre-named and in order, and come with artwork.
--You'll need a program to unlock the WinRAR files once they download to your hard drive. Info on WinRAR files is here, and the program download links are here.
--Save the uncompressed files somewhere smart (like a folder on your desktop called 'bootlegs'). Drag the songs into iTunes and wha-la, you're jamming.

Some of the gems I have found:

--Van Halen demos as produced by KISS' Gene Simmons when he was toying with the idea of being the band's manager in 1976.
--The heavy metal day of the US Festival from 1983
--Pink Floyd debuting Echoes on the John Peel Sessions in 1971
--Live AC/DC gigs from the Highway to Hell tour with Bon Scott
--The last ever Wings concert
--Black Sabbath on tour in 1983 with Ian Gillan on vocals (hearing him shriek his way through Heaven and Hell is worth the download right there).
--The A.R.M.S. concert from 1983 where Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton all shared the bill (and stage). Check out Paul Rodgers and Page busting out a version of Midnight Moonlight, pre The Firm.
--Zeppelin busting out Physical Graffiti songs in New York City in 1975 before the album came out.

The sound quality varies. Most of the audience recordings are good for a listen but are not really gigs I will likely keep. But many of these are pulled right from the soundboard or are audio feeds and are therefore fairly pristine. They have all been mastered by engineers to bring out the best possible sound.

What I learned is that these bootleg traders are pretty fanatical about making the sound as good as possible. They list methods and technology/gear used, in great detail. Polishing turds in many cases, but for example there is a 1980 Genesis live gig that rivals the official 3 Sides Live release from a couple of years later.

Anyway, have fun poking around and let me know if you stumble on any gems.

Beatles Boots Part Two

I found a much better source for all of the Purple Chick Beatles bootlegs and a ton more. This site also provides downloads in FLAC format, delivered in Zip files, which eliminates the need to sign up for Rapidshare to get the downloads.

As with any downloads, please use your security software to ensure you are not downloading anything malicious. So far so good on my end but I am not responsible if your computer is infected! Check it out on your own...

Not sure how long this site will remain live, so as McCartney once sang, "If you want it here it is, come and get it 'cause it's going fast." Here's the link.

Beatles Bootleg Gold Mine

Holy mother of God. If you are a Beatles fan, block off a few WEEKS to get through this.

Rolling Stone posted a very small blurb a few issues ago that read:

The Beatles' albums came out on CD in 1987, but fans have long complained that the early digital technology used to remaster the recordings left them sounding hollow and thin — and that the official remasters are way overdue. That's where Purple Chick comes in — a secretive fan (or group of fans) who has been quietly remastering classic discs like Revolver and A Hard Day's Night, and releasing the digital files for free online. How is this possible? The Beatles' CDs sound so bad that carefully digitized tracks from pristine vinyl copies are noticeably better — with crisper highs, a fuller soundstage, and more realistic reproduction of instruments and voices. And the Purple Chick editions are superior to the originals in other ways, too: The Sgt. Pepper collection contains the original record in mono and stereo, and four discs' worth of studio outtakes; the White Album comes in a whopping twelve-disc version, including alternate takes, studio chatter, demos and fascinating jams. So how do you get this stuff? Google is your friend: Try searching "purple chick and megaupload" to get started.

So I did.

It took a lot of hunting but I found a great source for some of these boots - essentially a chat forum that has links to the various CDs in MP3 format, complete with artwork that loads to iTunes. Some are in FLAC format, which is a supposedly cleaner form of compression but requires a special player (I think - haven't got that far yet).

You download all of this through a service called Rapidshare that is free but I'd suggest signing up for the short term full access program so you can download many CDs at a time (I had 20 going at once and it was fast). You'll also need a couple of Plug Ins to unbundle what you are downloading but just Google the name of the software and make sure you are downloading it from reputable sites.

There are a few dead links. For example, not all the Beatles for Sale links work and only a couple of the many White Album links work. But you will be able to get almost everything from Please Please Me through Magical Mystery Tour. That is more than 25 discs worth of Beatles bootlegs and remasters.

I have barely listened to what I have downloaded, but here are a few observations:

--The first two discs of each set for the most part are the re-masters - in mono and stereo. Remember, from Geoff Emerick's book, they paid little attention to the stereo mixes and mono is what you want if you want to hear how these songs were best mixed. I have yet to compare the re-masters with the 80s CDs, but Rolling Stone did it for you here.

--The area I am most interested in are the outtakes and studio run throughs. Some of them are from the Anthology series (so you have heard them before) but the depth of this collection is unrivalled. If your idea of a good time is to hear 15 versions of Strawberry Fields as the band works out the arrangement, you are in for a treat. You want to hear George Martin solo the vocal track on Sgt Pepper? OK, that's here too, from some TV show (Anthology maybe?). You want to hear the band rip through Day Tripper, with no vocals? Check.

--Make sure to download The Threetles - which is the three surviving Beatles (at the time) creating Free As A Bird and Real Love for the Anthology series. And, all of the music from the DVD version of Anthology is here as well. So, the jam McCartney, Harrison and Starr do in the studio on the DVD bonus material is here. As are the original Lennon versions of Free As A Bird and Real Love, so you can hear what they had to work with (which wasn't much!).

--Lots of fucking around and fucking up (and laughing). They polish turds into masterpieces before your ears.

I could go on and on and on. And I have barely checked any of this out. Tell me what you think.

The place that will get you going is here (click through all seven pages of the chat to get the various links).