Although I don't own a record label or make music myself I can't
understand why people who do get so upset ("fuckface"?) about the whole
issue of bootleging, and I think they may be looking at it from the
entirely wrong perspective. Try to see it where I'm coming from: I'm a
huge AFX fan, fucking massive, I've bought every single thing I can
find. And I mean everything, remixes, everything. Still, since I've only
been a fan for about 1 1/2 years there are certain things I just can't
find: Analogue Bubble Bath 3 on CD, the Caustic Window Joy Rex Eps,
Q-Chastic, Power Pill, and the chances of me EVER finding any of these
are very slim. Even though I've called countless stores, mail order
houses, record finders, etc. no luck. Now imagine you where a Beatles
fan, the biggest Beatles fan in the world and couldn't, no matter how
hard you looked, find a copy of Sgt. Pepper or The White Album. You can
imagine how insanely depressing this might be, especially being able to
hear snipets on the web and knowing that other people do have these
releases, but you never will and will never have a chance to hear them
in their entirerity. If someone were to make a bootleg of these
releases, which I cannot find anyway and where no longer in print, how
would I be hurting the label? I'm not taking money from it, because it
has no competing product, its long gone. But look how happy it would
make me?
And if the label WERE to come out with re-issues of the material at some
later date I would certainly buy them in an instant, in fact I'd
probably have them on special order and wait all day in the store until
the UPS van pulled up, because the quality of an official release would
surely be better than the bootleg. I have bought identical copies of
Bootleged material officialy released at a later date (Nirvana
Unplugged, unreleased Velvet Underground), and I assume most people
willing to shell out the amount of money for bootlegs, being bigger fans
than your average, would do the same as well. I have never bought
bootleged material where an official release is available, it simply
doesn't make sense.
Oh well.
-Fresh
Orange County, California
USA
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