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I am an active and enthusiastic recordist and have decades of stuff I've accumulated over the years. One of the concerts I captured in the 90's, lives on as a
by rigonkulous 6mo ago
I am an active and enthusiastic recordist and have decades of stuff I've accumulated over the years.
One of the concerts I captured in the 90's, lives on as a bootleg which I often see around the scene of this one particularly great live electronic dance band, whose punters have created true value out of the hour and a half of live concert input I managed to record, standing right there front stage and center, with the band looking right at me.
It was a hilarious experience - I expected to get booted out pretty fast, so I held my ground as still as I could, DAT-tape rolling by, shotgun mike held in front of me like it was just normal, as if I belonged there.
The lead singer caught my eye and gave me a wide grin. I survived the concert, it was awesome, but boy was I relieved to have made it home with that DAT - which I of course, proceeded to digitize with my brand new spdf/io ..
The next year the band (who are big and famous, btw) were in the same city and I happened to be around, I got invited backstage to meet the band, participate in a bit of nerdery regarding their live setup and gear and so on, and talk about that recording I'd made.
I'd put it out as a pure bootleg, no questions asked.
Turns out they'd heard it and enjoyed it and came to appreciate the nature of their bootleggers, as avid fans who gave the band themselves something extra to think about in what was then, a burgeoning digital/online universe about to explode.
So, seeing it around, almost 30 years now .. here and there, again and again .. is quite hilarious. Youtube often recommends it to me in my playlist, its just there.
And at a certain spot in the recording, I tell my mate to stop standing so close to me (he was blocking the shottie), and prepare for my ass getting bounced - which never happened, thankfully.
So yeah, I just wanna say, if you personally have the desire to be a recordist, and have a pure purpose in it, I'd say just freakin' go for it.
Record All The Things.
Its good for the Artists, yo. And also their fans. (Its how we get rid of the managers, cough cough..)
- erickhill 6mo agoI loved reading this with the still built-in caginess around all the identifying details. Just in case!
- whompyjaw 6mo agoWhat is a "punter"?
- stavros 6mo agoCustomer/fan/concertgoer.
- nutjob2 6mo agoIn this case, an attendee to the concert. More generally someone on the buying/risk side of a transaction.
- rolph 6mo agoalso common UK slang, for someone who constantly does things in the grey. to wit: scammer, scheister, player.
- gib444 6mo agoThat's incorrect. In British slang it means a customer/patron. In this context a fan/concertgoer (Source: I'm British)
- rolph 6mo agointeresting, so when a fellow is taken up by the cops, and he says "thers no punt, im telling you truth", is that unfamiliar? i have a lot of different nationalities partaking of my wilderness lodge, and a lot of the younger english ones use punt/play/burn/scam as equivalent. i can see how they could merge, considering a colloquial "punt" [rugby/footall] as a maneuver with adverse risk.
- philposting 6mo agoNever heard of that usage (I'm also British).
- rolph 6mo agocould it be a cockney thing ?
- 6mo ago
- tyrust 6mo agoGreat story, but how are you going to say all that but not link to the recording?
- mistersquid 6mo ago[dead]
- wahern 6mo agoIt's still technically illegal. And I wouldn't be surprised if there's a tacit Don't Ask, Don't Tell understanding in the community between artists and recorders. Even when individual recorders are known by the community and artists, keeping the pretense of anonymity might be important to preserving and protecting the scene.
- switz 6mo agoIt's really up to the artists. Many are surprisingly cool with it, though there are a few notable exceptions (i.e. Prince). Sounds like the artist in this particlar case gave their blessing. Many bands (like GD and Phish) specifically note in their rider that venues must allow and provide space for tapers to bring their rigs in. A sibling comment in this thread pointed out my project Relisten[0], which now has over 4,000 bands who have given explicit permission for people to tape, record, and share their concerts non-commercially. We've been operating our FOSS platform for 12 years, and most of the audio is hosted by Archive.org. I can't tell you how many bands have begged us to add them to our platform. [0] https://relisten.net https://relisten.net (https://github.com/RelistenNet https://github.com/RelistenNet) (The 4,000 number will be coming to web soon - it's available today on our mobile apps)
- TurdF3rguson 6mo ago> though there are a few notable exceptions (i.e. Prince) There was an episode of "What's Happening" when Rerun gets in trouble for bootlegging a Doobie Brothers concert, does anyone remember? It aired when I was a kid and now I somehow still feel guilty when I listen to bootlegs.
- 999900000999 6mo agoWe shouldn’t need the managers, but the record industry does everything it can to consolidate everything. However, I do notice that for more uncommon music, the record industry sort it just looks the other way. For example Eminem has tons of really old music on YouTube that I’m sure his lawyers could figure out how to get taken down. But it just stays up. I would really like music copyright to change within my lifetime. It should realistically be 30 years from first release, and after that it should go straight to the public domain. By then everyone’s made their money. Even Elvis won’t be public domain until like 2050 or 2060. I don’t really think he needs the money right now.
- euroderf 6mo ago> the record industry does everything it can to consolidate everything. Financialization ? Productize, promote, push ?
- tempaccount5050 6mo agoI agree mostly but take issue with "not needing managers". As someone who went from split shows to big venues to touring, managers (good ones) are a godsend. Will there be convenient parking? Do they have adequate power? Is the stage big enough? Do we need to book sound? Is there a weather contingency? Where can we sleep? What time is load in? What time is sound check? What form of payment? How will they be advertising? Who do we give promotional materials to? Etc etc. Having someone take care of all this stuff allows us to focus on practicing and recording (which has another long list of questions that need to be addressed). Not to mention networking and venue access. Put all that stuff together and it's a full time job that artists are poorly equipped to handle.
- 999900000999 6mo agoI assumed managers in this context, meant the record industry machine. Most bands don’t care if you find a bootleg of a live recording, it’s going to be a very different experience versus an actual album anyway.
- 6mo ago
- augusto-moura 6mo agoYou made me curious about the recording, could you share the youtube link for it? Only if you are comfortable with it, ofc
- rigonkulous 6mo agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXBEsPy1SSo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXBEsPy1SSo
- jjulius 6mo agoAs a huge fan of the type of music you're probably describing, I'd love to know what artist/recording you're referring to here. Surely with the band's blessing and ~30 years of time passed, it'd be okay to divulge...
- brightbeige 6mo agoNot OP, but my guess is Underworld. Edit: or Erasure?
- jjulius 6mo agoHuge fan here, that was my immediate guess as well. :)
- rigonkulous 6mo agoYes, Underworld, live at The Mayan, 1998: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXBEsPy1SSo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXBEsPy1SSo Very good guess, btw.
- lukan 6mo ago"Record All The Things." Unless you use a crappy smartphone with a bright annoying screen ..
- TYPE_FASTER 6mo agoSomebody whipped out a freakin iPad and started recording video in front of me once. Like wtf
- 31337Logic 6mo agoI hope you told them to stop. I always do. And that's not out of any copy infringement morals or anything, but of course out of a personal enjoyment infringement. ;-)
- ArtushZurabyan 6mo agoYeah, I get that :) But at the same time, it’s interesting how people react differently. Some want the moment only for themselves, others want to capture it.
- ArtushZurabyan 6mo agoI get this. At the same time, people want to capture something real while they’re there. Feels like a trade-off.
- lukan 6mo agoNope. By disturbing all the people around you with a bright screen, you prevent them from capturing the real concert right now they want to see without a flickering screen in front of them. And personally I can record, or enjoy the real moment. But most people who record with their crappy smartphones probably just want to get the virtual recognition after they shared their videos, they were there, "like", great. But no one I know, actually watches shaky crappy smartphone concert recordings.
- rigonkulous 6mo ago
- hungryhobbit 6mo agoGreat project, but it has an absolutely TERRIBLE UI. Please, if you love audio enough to put in the 95% of effort to get the files to the web, don't let everyone down with an atrocious interface to actually access those files. Please, get someone who knows about usability or building web UIs to help you!
- anjel 6mo agoArchive.org always made puzzling UI choices, not really sure why, but its a long running trend thats not likely to change. Such that for larger Band repos, fans stepped in and made their own front ends: 1. https://www.gdao.org/ https://www.gdao.org/ 2. https://dlr2008.wordpress.com/2014/06/15/on-public-access-to-the-internet-archives-grateful-dead-collection/#comments https://dlr2008.wordpress.com/2014/06/15/on-public-access-to... 3. https://relisten.net/grateful-dead https://relisten.net/grateful-dead Clearly this tape stash is worthy of similar treatment. Also of note for live music fans and collectors: Legendary Long Island Radio Station WLIR Live Show Archives: https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22WLIR%22 https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22WLIR%22
- block_dagger 6mo agoThats why projects like Relisten exist https://relisten.net https://relisten.net
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- brightball 6mo agoI talked to a big Grateful Dead fan the other day and he told me that they had special areas setup for anybody who wanted to record. They were happy to let people share.
- wallst07 6mo agoYup, same as Phish. I used to buy VHS tapes of live Phish recordings from the person at the show. VHS because of the fidelity I guess.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 6mo agoYep, the tapers section. At some shows you could get a soundboard feed. I was a teenager at the last show I was at, and I always envied thise guys.
- scrame 6mo ago[flagged]
- lb1lf 6mo agoHaha, I can relate. Dabbled both with live recording (using a Sony PCM-M1 and a pair of very unobtrusive capsule mikes if the venue and band didn't have an enlightened recording policy, a DA-P1 and a pair of 416s if they did) and photograpy (mostly a Nikon F3 and a 105mm f/2.5). I got VERY good at quickly rewinding a film roll and slipping it in the hands of a nearby friend in case security spotted me and wanted to nick my film. Always had a handful of empty film rolls to give up (seemingly reluctantly) Worst scare I had was when taping Ray Charles at a jazz festival in Norway c.2000, methinks. Well into the show, he exclaims that some ass is taping his show, and he's not too happy about it. Starts explaining he's not going to play on until he's got that tape in his hands! I glance around, rather nervously, but noone is heading for me - so I just keep recording, hoping that someone else is on the hook. Lo and behold, moments later a stage hand comes on stage with what appeared to be a broadcast video tape, giving it to a triumphant Ray Charles who sits down and starts playing again. Phew!
- rigonkulous 6mo agoGreat story! high five Oh wait, you probably couldn't high-5 Ray, lol ..