The Old Timers' Bootleg-Shopping-Recollections Thread

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Re: The Old Timers' Bootleg-Shopping-Recollections Thread

Post by 20YearsAgo »

Truly a great post, Mark. I would've loved to have gone to the Abbey Road show. Thank you for sharing your pictures. So sorry to hear about your friend though.
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Re: The Old Timers' Bootleg-Shopping-Recollections Thread

Post by JPM7756 »

Mark thank you for sharing your story and photos here. It really made my day seeing those covers again. Great memories.
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Re: The Old Timers' Bootleg-Shopping-Recollections Thread

Post by Nimbus »

What a lovely series of posts, Mark. They very much mirror my own experiences of the Abbey Road Show (August 1983),ferreting round record fairs, (Manchester Picadilly mainly) and the Beatles conventions etc. At the first convention I went to in Liverpool, around 1977, they had a Beatles quiz and we all had a go. It was won by a young guy called Mark Lewisohn - I wonder whatever happened to him ? I returned to Abbey Road about 8 years ago when they held the recording session lectures. They were not Beatle specific but just to be in that room again was enough. I was like the young kid of 30 years ago. I took an mp3 player with me, full of Beatle studio chat & snippets, closed my eyes, and I'm not ashamed to say that I was welling up. Religious people have their Church of the Nativity, St Peter's or Sistine Chapel, for me there's 'Abbey Road Studio 2'. After the show, it was announced that Lizzie Bravo was in the audience and we managed a few words with her. I've spoken to someone who sang on a Beatles record - how cool is that :) I have some photos from 1983 but I haven't scanned them yet. I'll get round to it one day.

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2013
Me on the stairs
Studio 2
The 'Mrs Mills' piano
Lizzie Bravo
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Re: The Old Timers' Bootleg-Shopping-Recollections Thread

Post by MarkRJones1970 »

Nimbus wrote: Wed Apr 28, 2021 9:51 pm I have some photos from 1983 but I haven't scanned them yet. I'll get round to it one day.
I'd LOVE to see them! I have few more so here's the rest of the photos I took on 26 July 1983. I wasn't able to take many as we had been on a family day out in London.
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This reads:
"Harmonium

This instrument was used in the
recording of 'We Can Work It Out'
and other Beatles Titles."


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Dad allowed me to use up the rest of the film. We only had one for the day. It was a DISC camera too (the one I was holding in the 1983 photo of myself which I received on my birthday). The pictures were always a bit fuzzy due to the small size of the negtative itself. I still have it! :)
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Re: The Old Timers' Bootleg-Shopping-Recollections Thread

Post by MarkRJones1970 »

So here's the current state of my vinyl Beatles bootlegs from the 80s. I did have at least 10 volumes of the 'Lost Lennon Tapes' on Bag records. I used to buy them as they came out but they got sold about 20 years ago.
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While I was looking through these I noticed this. Do you think the manufacturers of 'Ultra Rare Trax 5 & 6' had copies of 'Get Back' era boots 'Kool Wax' and 'Commonwealth' on Shogun records and just nicked the covers for their release? Or was it just a coincidence? It's telling that the parts of artwork that had text on the 2 'Get Back' era records is cropped out of the version on the URT cover.
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Re: The Old Timers' Bootleg-Shopping-Recollections Thread

Post by mojofilter »

I discovered bootlegs in 1974. I came from a small town that had only two places you could buy records. Sometimes I had to ask the man at the TV & appliance store if he would order a particular record for me from his supplier, which I'd heard on the radio but could not find in either local store. Early in my teens, I started going to the nearest city, to go looking for records. Then I went to the biggest city in the country to look for records, and it was like a vinyl fetishist's paradise. They had dozens of shops, many within walking distance of the downtown core. One of the places I liked to go at the time was a head shop, because they had a room at the back with black-light posters, which were cool.

One day, I noticed a box of albums on a stool behind the counter. I will look at any records, anywhere. I asked if I could look in the box. It was full of bootlegs in plain white sleeves with either no writing or stamped titles, or a paper insert with a drawing by someone such as William Stout. Some of these albums were by The Beatles, but they had listings of songs I'd never heard before. And they were dirt cheap, too, like $7. I left with "Spicy Beatles Songs" and one of the "Renaissance Minstrels" discs, and something called "More By The Fab Four." I took them home and was appalled by the sound on them, but these are where I first heard "Teddy Boy" and "The Walk" and "WTNMJ" and some BBC recordings and other live recordings and stuff I can't remember anymore. Once someone found out I had them, they were all stolen.

Must find more of these.

I would go to shops further afield than downtown, and this is where all the bootleg shops were hiding. I'd spend all my money on them. I got the "Top Of The Pops" 7" EP, and originals of "20x4" and "No.3 Abbey Road NW8" on Audifon, "The Decca Tapes" on POD, a 2LP of "Sweet Apple Trax" on Newsound NR 909-1, a WCF "Xmas Album" and the pirate of Melvin's "Vs. Don Ho" that was retitled "Silver Lining," and "Live At The Houston Coliseum" and "The Black Album," an original "Here's To Veterans" US PSA album, "Sessions," "Vancouver '64," "Wonderful Picture Of You," "Liverpool 1960," "Supertracks" (several volumes in colored vinyl) I was at a shop one day when the bootleg supplier came in with a box of multiple copies of "Silver Lining," "Rough Notes," "No. 3 Abbey Road" and "The Beatles Christmas Album" in replica artwork, no longer originals but white-label repressings in worse sound than the originals.

Then I began to meet other collectors. I spent my income tax refund one year on a box of records a guy was getting rid of, because these things called "bootleg CDs" were coming out. He played me some tracks from the early Condors, and a BBC set from Japan, and it was like the bottom of the world fell out.

Must find more of these.

I discovered record conventions, and went to all of them that came to either of the cities I lived in. That was right around the time of the German and Italian protection gap CDs issued by the boatload. I had about 20 CD boots before I had anything to play them on. Next big thing to happen was the internet, and you know the rest of that story. I still bought some from Japan and Singapore, but then the floodgates opened and it was like a candy store where all the merchandise was what you'd kill to own, and it was all free. There was so much free stuff, I am still sorting it out on my storage drives and in my database.

I'd just like to add that at one record show, I was browsing next to a guy looking in a different box, and he came up with a "Yesterday And Today" trunk sleeve with no record in it. After careful scrutiny, he was able to see the butcher cover underneath. After putting on his best poker face, he walked away with it for $2.
Last edited by mojofilter on Sat May 08, 2021 2:29 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Old Timers' Bootleg-Shopping-Recollections Thread

Post by Lord Reith »

mojofilter wrote: Thu May 06, 2021 7:26 am
I'd just like to add that at one record show, I was browsing next to a guy looking in a different box, and he came up with a "Yesterday And Today" trunk sleeve with no record in it. After careful scrutiny, he was able to see the butcher cover underneath. After putting on his best poker face, he walked away with it for $2.
WOAH! RESULT!

A few years ago I found a shop with what must have been nearly a hundred old vinyl boots. Someone must have died and the relatives gave them to the shop . So they were selling them really cheap, about a 1/5 of what they'd cost online. There was a bunch of ones I wanted, but i didn't want them to realise how excited I was. I bought three very casually, then a few days later returned and bought some more. They then must have tumbled and the prices tripled overnight. But i got a bunch of old 80s titles that I'd not got back in the day, for less than I would have paid at the time. I also got back one of my old records that I'd sold some 25 years beforehand (my actual copy). The guy who died must have bought my copy. :)
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Re: The Old Timers' Bootleg-Shopping-Recollections Thread

Post by Lord Reith »

Mark I love all those photos. I had a really bad mono cassette player which i used to make compilation tapes, placing the microphone between the two bookshelf speakers pointing at each other. In 1981 for my birthday I got a Hitachi stereo FM radio/cassette with a DIN socket input and I was in heaven! I could actually make in-line stereo tapes now! Wish I still had it. Stupidly I threw all my old tech out. Now I find I miss that stuff like crazy, and if I still had it I wouldn't use it but I'd have it out just to look at and remind me of happy times.
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Re: The Old Timers' Bootleg-Shopping-Recollections Thread

Post by Nimbus »

MarkRJones1970 wrote: Thu May 06, 2021 6:26 am
Nimbus wrote: Wed Apr 28, 2021 9:51 pm I have some photos from 1983 but I haven't scanned them yet. I'll get round to it one day.
I'd LOVE to see them! I have few more so here's the rest of the photos I took on 26 July 1983. I wasn't able to take many as we had been on a family day out in London.
Here you go. Hope they bring back some memories of the event.

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Re: The Old Timers' Bootleg-Shopping-Recollections Thread

Post by MarkRJones1970 »

Those are brilliant to see. Thanks for posting them up!
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