Keane, You Ain't No PJ

Legit Bootlegs

There was a feature on Sky News about one bands efforts to curb bootleg CDs.

Now as much as I hate them, Keane are great for promotiong the instant live CD technology at their UK gigs, but the music industry are really behind the times when it comes to preserving the lost sales from the bootleggers. As early as the end of he last century, Pearl Jam have pioneered the self release of their gigs.

In the year 2000, I bought the 2 disc set of the set I had witnessed at the MEN Arena in Manchester, complete with clear audio of The Big Man shouting 'State of Love and Trust' seconds before kicking into the song, in a matter of weeks after the actual night.The band now have brought their bootlegs system upto date in the last couple of years by using this technology to its best advantage by setting up a java facility on their website enabling fans to download the gigs when they return to their homes. After Reading, I myself downloaded CD covers, professional pictures of the night and the audio recording a mere 48 hours, plus the one from Dublin I downloaded by mistake. Each gig cost about a fiver. Excellent value. I mean, what could be more of a perfect souvenir.

This is technology many of other bands have taken up, including a band I am going to see in a few weeks, Rancid. This is very much welcomed by long time bootleg fanatics and music fans like myself who crave more than just the albums and odd special snippet you get from the radio.I just wonder whether the industry have thought of another bootleg source though, local libraries.

I am saying this having spent some time today in my local library. Over the years I have downloaded so much more from libraries as my music taste has grown, the choice in libraries have gotten better and more importantly, more money has been spent to update local libraries. It's just a question of taking the CDs home and burning them with the technology we have at our fingertips these days.

I've been really bad this year with my favourite bands. I still do not have the new Chilis album or the Pearl Jam album, which if my 18year old self found out about, he would certainly kick my ass. It's lucky then that I have just hired out both CDs from the library, which will now get burned and copied onto blank CDs, where you can easily get now when you are buying milk from Tescos. These will also get burned for Rolf. I'm sorry, but they will. There is always a part of me that feels gulity for this, but I know that I have invested more than my fair share in the industry for the last 30 years. That's kinda what this new blog is all about and I have enough experience to keep it going for a while. I know that having copies on a blank CD and the real thing is no subsitute. As a collector and completist, I know this but my tastes are so varied these days, I can't afford to be that anymore.

There will always be bands that I will eventually buy everything for, Pearl Jam and Pearl Jam being two such bands that I already collect but for the time being I am going to have to make do with copies and eventually take back (before the 18th) the wonderful original products (both of which are beautiful, incidentally) back to their owners but the band should be safe in the knowledge (sat in their huge mansions) that I do appreciate them and have partly put their toes on those soft persian rugs and into their limited edition cadillacs. At the moment, I only listen to music as I type away on my many non-existant projects or on my ipod, so wonderful packaging is not nescessarily needed by me. Besides, I have far too many, like books.

It's going back in the favour of the bands though and that definately makes the fans happy, especially when their favourite bands are inspired by it to continue instead of collapse and disintegrate under the pressure of not making enough whilst their label clears up like so many smaller bands have before them.

So Keane, Bitsy salutes you. You're still shit though.