These Boots Were Made for Rockin'

Fugazi (photo: Jim Saah) & Superchunk's live offerings

Bands' official 'bootlegs'
by Joseph Larkin

The CD's packaging is plain, generic and unassuming. The sound found on the CD is good, but not perfect—like a hippie's logic, it is severely flawed, but, also like a hippie, its many flaws are part of its numerous charms. This CD is not a legitimate “live album” in the strictest sense of the term, it is a bootleg. Yes sir, a bootleg, but one with a twist: this bootleg was released by the band that has been bootlegged! That's right, kids: the lunatics have taken over the asylum and rock bands have started bootlegging themselves. We are through the looking glass here, people.

In the past, bands sometimes released live and rare material exclusively to members of their fan clubs (see Live in Stockholm by the Breeders and the Bun E.'s Basement Bootlegs series released by Epic recording artists Cheap Trick). There was also the history of ultimate jam-band gods the Grateful Dead setting aside special sections at their concerts for fans to tape their shows. Sometimes, other bands would release live discs in limited runs through smaller labels (see Cave in's recent offering, Live Airwaves, put out on the tiny Magic Bullet Records imprint). Later, bands started to get forceful and live recordings that were originally released via the black market started getting released via legitimate outlets.

Take the Butthole Surfers as an example. Eleven years ago, the band dropped The Hole Truth and Nothing Butt on its fans even though the same exact set had already made the rounds in collector's circles. Their recent Humpty Dumpty LSD collection contains a number of tracks that were originally released on bootleg seven inches years ago.

Bob Dylan has done this sort of thing as well with his Bootleg series (including a famed 1964 concert that was finally released this year). Hell, even the Monkees got in on the act with Missing Links, a series of CD's that collects numerous outtakes that first saw the light of day on bootleg LP's, one of which was called Monkeeshine. But nowadays, bands are actually cheaply recording their own bootlegs and selling them directly to their fans via their websites and live concerts.

In the mid-nineties, noise-rockers the Swans opened up the doors to their vast vault and let fans buy copies of numerous shows that they had recorded from the soundboard for ten dollars a tape. In 2000, earnest grunge-rockers Pearl Jam took the concept one step further when they decided to unleash seventy-two live albums on the world-- every show from their 2000 U.S. and European tours minus the one where all those kids died (hey, you buy yer tickets, you take yer chances). In 2003, they released seventy-three more live concerts and sold ‘em directly to fans through their website. Following Pearl Jam's success, the proverbial floodgates opened-- bands as varied as The Who, Yes, Duran Duran and Peter Gabriel started releasing whole tours' worth of live concerts on CD, none of which were actually worth listening to. Even Hawaiian shirt rockers Incubus have gotten in on the act, selling live concerts on their webpage and donating the profits to charity or something. All of these live recordings were made available to the consumer just days or weeks after the shows were played.

This is all well and good, but what if you could buy a live CD of a show mere minutes after it ended? The country's largest concert promoter is all set to sell such an item! The project has been dubbed Instant Live and its goal is to make CD recordings of shows available to concertgoers within minutes of the last song-- these live CD's are basically an impulse buy, like a t-shirt. Though the idea is interesting, most fans and industry types remain skeptical.

Superchunk's Mac McCaughan says “I'm not terribly interested in it, though maybe I would be if I saw some amazing show and knew I had to own it right then but that doesn't happen very often. As a performer, it's not that appealing to me because we've played lots of great shows, or shows that seemed great at the time, but then listened back to board tapes or whatever and it turns out that while it was a great show in terms of energy, crowd participation, intensity, whatever, it just didn't sound that great when recorded! I think if you're going to sell something to people you should really be able to vet its quality first, and you can't really do that with those Instant Live recording things."

Clear Channel, the evil corporate ogre, is behind Instant Live and so far the company has had success with annoying jam bands like the Allman Brothers Band and moe, two bands that already have a proven track record when it comes to their gullible fans buying and trading their stupid live concerts. Furthering tightening its grip on the music industry, Clear Channel bought the patent from the technology's inventers and now claims exclusive rights to sell concert CDs after shows.

Tell that to DiscLive, who recorded the Pixies at every show of their recent fifteen-date North American tour, making every CD immediately available after the performance. DiscLive printed one thousand copies of each performance as a double-disc set which were made available for purchase at twenty-five clams a pop after each show or twenty-two dollars if pre-ordered on DiscLive's website--five hundred CD's from each show were made available for pre-order online. DiscLive sold an additional five hundred CD's at each performance, along with any remaining CD's that were not pre-ordered. For the final show of the tour, the Coachella Music & Arts Festival, two thousand CD's were pressed. The band's later shows in Brixton were also offered up for sale and there are plans to offer live CDs of every show off of the upcoming reunion tour of the U.S. According to DiscLive, once the CD's have sold-out, they will not be re-pressed. In the interest of making some extra cash to buy drugs, I dropped three hundred dollars into DiscLive's lap and bought every single Pixies show save the first one in Minneapolis, which sold out before I could secure a copy, in the hopes of later selling the discs on the Internet for a tidy profit--this was a sound business decision on my part as the Minneapolis show was going for well over one hundred dollars on eBay just hours after the show had ended. These Pixies CD's are basically just glorified CD-R's in cheap digi-packs, but they sound decent enough. DiscLive also works with artists as diverse and outdated as Billy Idol, Newsboys (!), The Doors of the 21st Century (!!), Jefferson Starship (!!!), Robby Romero (?) and Janita Antibalas (?!). It's shocking to think that anyone would go see any of those artists live let alone want to take home a document of such an experience. This is the problem with the whole legitimate bootleg experiment--no bands that are worth a shit have been participating. Until now, that is.

Enter indie-rock superstars Superchunk, who have started up their own Clambakes series of live recordings, and Fugazi, who have recently launched a new website, found on the Internet at www.fugaziliveseries.com, which they are using to sell twenty shows from throughout their illustrious career. Yes, you read that correctly: twenty shows. Fugazi are making Superchunk look like slack motherfuckers, as Superchunk have released just three extremely limited edition Clambakes live CD's.

To be fair, the first two Clambakes discs aren't live albums, strictly speaking, and they are certainly not recommended to those who are not hardcore fans of the band. The third one, however, is a scorcher with a solid setlist, decent sound and a scintillating performance. In the liner notes to the newly released Clambakes set, recorded live in 1999 at the Merge Tenth Anniversary Celebration in North Carolina, McCaughan calls it “Superchunk's first live album,” despite the fact that two other live sets preceded it.

McCaughan exaplains: “the first Clambakes was a collection of acoustic performances from different sites, and while I suppose they are indeed ‘live' performances in front of audiences, it's more like a different look at a bunch of Superchunk songs than a typical ‘Superchunk live show.' The second Clambakes, which is maybe the least accessible but to me the most interesting since it's a full hour's worth of material that only exists on that disc, was also performed live to accompany a silent film, Page of Madness--the recording is of the only time we performed it--but again, it's not really a Superchunk concert per se, so this new one seemed like the first time we've ever released a recording of a Superhcunk live show in its entirety.”

Expect more Clambakes CD's in the future, just don't expect too many of ‘em. “There are tons of shows recorded, but I'm not interested in flooding the market with crappy live recordings just because we could--and, believe me, we could! We've got tons of ‘em! But there are some that sound good and the performance is good (a rare combo), so hopefully there will be others in the future,” declares McCaughan.

Fugazi's approach to live CD's is quite different from Superchunk's--Fugazi's CD's are meant as “warts and all” affairs that capture the shows just as they happened with almost no corrections for quality being made. Aside from the first show, none of the shows have been mixed or remixed in any way. “The first show was a second generation tape so we used a digital program to remove as much hiss as we could. Otherwise the shows were transferred to CD as they were,” bassist Joe Lally explains. “It should be noted that these are very much the original recordings without any attempt to correct for things like volume changes, strange mixing effects, the occasionally out-of-tune guitar or the tape running out. Though the sound quality on these tapes does vary, if a show was too poorly recorded it didn't make the cut,” says Fugazi's website.

Why did Fugazi release all these live shows? “We could never decide on one show that represented Fugazi live,” Lally reports. “We always wanted to make a number of shows available. I suppose we'd like to make all the ones with decent sound quality available. So this is a beginning and we'll see what interest there is.” And why now? “Now is a good time because the band isn't playing shows or recording, so there's time to focus on it.” Well, alright. Fugazi's website further explains the band's decision to make these shows available to the publics in plain standard straightforward English: “For many years, Fugazi has made a point of taping our live shows. We started out using a simple cassette recorder, then moved on to a digital audio tape recorder (DAT) and finally just burned straight onto CD's. Most of the tapes were made from a combination of board mixes and live mic-ing and over the years we have amassed literally hundreds of these recordings in our tape library. We have digitally transferred to compact disc an initial sampling of twenty of these shows from various points in the band's career and outfitted each with a uniform generic cover with individual concert information and a track listing.” The discs are exceptionally affordable when compared to those being sold by DiscLive: shorter shows that fit on one disc are available for eight dollars postpaid while longer sets are on two discs and are available for ten dollars postpaid.

There are tons of Fugazi shows taped right from the soundboard already out there that can be heard if someone is willing to root ‘em out. For example, I already have a copy of one show that Fugazi is selling [5-2-97 NEW YORK/NYU LOEB CENTER] on tape and I'm fairly certain there's a heavily truncated bootleg of the 10-8-90 BEILEFELD, GERMANY/PC 69 show, ironically titled Stage Dive Masters, floating around. Though these shows aren't on professionally printed CDs and the band doesn't take responsibility for letting the tapes slip out. Lally makes it clear that the band isn't worried about its bootlegged competition: “If you already have a great copy of a show, I guess you won't buy it. That's cool.”

With “literally hundreds of [live] recordings in [Fugazi's] tape library,” how did the band go about choosing what shows to release? “I'm the one who chose this first set of shows,” Lally elaborates. “I felt the first show, since we actually had it, would be of interest along with the tenth anniversary show and both have proven to be popular. On the other hand, I thought a variety of countries should be represented, but since most people want a show they were at, places like Kuala Lumpur, Canberra, Fredericton and Dunedin don't get ordered as much. Although if you're purchasing [the CD's] as a set, you get to see the big picture. Of course, I had no idea people would want to purchase them as a set. For some reason I didn't do shows that I felt we had just played, so I stopped at 1999. It took so long to get this together [that] I should have realized putting in later shows would be good. Since the shows after ‘99 are being requested most, there will certainly be some on the next set we make. So it goes.”

Lally insists that the success of similar ventures by bands like Pearl Jam did not prompt this undertaking. “We didn't know of anyone having success with this type of thing and even if we had, every band is different. Success was never a word that got us interested in doing something. We'd been trying to approach this for years but never had time to deal with it. Besides, all these tapes don't do much good sitting in a closet.” Joe's story checks out, but the live CD's have clearly been a success, as one can see by reading this quote from the website: “We were not prepared for the number of orders we've received so please be patient with us and we'll get them out as soon as we can.” The website was actually shut down for a couple o' weeks so that the band could repress CDs and somehow keep up with the high demand for the full set of twenty shows. Lally elaborates: “Basically, we low-balled the first pressing. We could have doubled it at least, but it's better to have people asking for them instead of a house full of unwanted CD's.” For the cash-strapped fan that can only afford one show out of the twenty, Lally recommends “the Berlin show [Volume 6]. We always remembered playing well that night and the crowd being exceptionally enthused.”

If I may be so bold as to make a pithy remark, I shall quote Fugazi and suggest that you “keep your eyes open” for more live CD's. “We don't know when but another set of ten or twenty will be added some day,” Lally promises. I can only hope the band will keep that promise--these CD's are a revelation. Since Fugazi has always been in the habit of playing new and unrecorded songs, the fan that purchases multiple shows gets to hear several early versions of old favorites that sometimes differ vastly from their recorded counterparts. For example, “Recap Modotti” is a completely different song and the original lyrics to “F/d” prove that Fugazi do have a sense of humor after all: “Son of a gun, I'm having fun / Son of a bitch, I'm getting rich.” Should these CDs continue to be as popular as they have already proven to be, then there may be some major truth to that thrown-away line...

As an enthusiastic music fan, I can only hope that more bands will witness the success of Fugazi ‘n' company and follow suit with their own live CD ventures (are you listening, Rocket from the Crypt, Clutch, Pleasure Club, Chokebore and Cheap Trick?!). A few bands here and there do appear to be dipping their feet into the live CD pool. For example, Comets on Fire recently pressed up one thousand copies of a live CD to sell on tour and, according to McCaughan, “Lambchop is the master of [making] limited edition live CDs to sell on tour; they always do cool little packages, have live or unreleased songs on them, think of charming titles and sell the hell out of them.” One can only hope that this trend will continue ad infinitum.

If Instant Live and legit bootlegs keep taking off, then it could render bootlegging unnecessary. So think before you buy! Sure, you're putting money back into the pockets of artists who have been robbed for years by bandits and shady businessmen, but you could also be putting some poor thief out of business. Without your money, how will these modern day pirates be able to afford going to the discos every night? How will they buy their designer drugs and fine wine?! They may have to start drinking wine coolers to get their much needed buzzes! Can you live with that, tuff guy?