Stolen Sounds Higher Recording Quality Makes Bootleg Cds Increasingly Popular

“This guy’s making a tape recording, everybody be careful, don’t make too much noise. No, keep it out, I like that idea. He’s OK, let him tape the show. … Yeah, we want to remember this, right? He can tape it …”

- Eddie Vedder upon catching a bootlegger recording a Pearl Jam concert in Stockholm, June 25, 1992

Music collectors swear by them. Many musicians swear at them.

Like drugs, they’re legal some places in the world, forbidden in others.

They make their way from country to country via an underground network, often hidden, disguised and called by code names so that customs agents and police won’t know what they are.

Most mainstream music fans don’t know what they are, either.

Sure, almost everyone has heard of bootleg records or CDs.

But what are they, exactly? Why are they illegal? And why are music fanatics willing to pay $25 to $40 or more for a single compact disc?

Fans do it to have rock music highlights they never dreamed existed.

All collectors have their own favorite performances that make the compulsion worthwhile, whether it’s listening to the early Beatles go through Buddy Holly’s “That’ll Be the Day” to mind-blowing latter-day performances from the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame ceremonies.

“If I were to point to why I do it, that’s just why,” said Daryl Teshima, a legal analyst who works in Costa Mesa, Calif.

He recalled a bootleg video tape of one particularly potent Hall of Fame match-up: “Bruce Springsteen and Mick Jagger sharing a mike, belting out a great version of ‘Satisfaction,’ backed by Neil Young and George Harrison and John Fogerty.”

Keyur Parikh, 18, a biology freshman at the University of California, Irvine, was puzzled a few years back when he went to a record store and found a stack of Pearl Jam CDs that he never knew existed.

“It was just kind of amazing that there were all these songs on disc that I’d never heard of by my favorite groups,” he said. “I wasn’t aware that there were companies that actually manufactured them.”

While browsing a Smashing Pumpkins bulletin board on the Internet, Parikh spied a reference to a different board - alt.fan.bootlegs, an Internet site where fans post reviews of the newest bootlegs and where to find them.

Pearl Jam is the most-bootlegged artist at the moment, and it doesn’t help matters that the band has done two live worldwide radio broadcasts in the past year.

Nirvana, Green Day, Nine Inch Nails, Tori Amos and Melissa Etheridge also are the latest big sellers, joining long-established bootleg favorites such as Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Led Zeppelin and others.

Because of its underground nature, no one has an accurate estimate of how much money changes hands over bootlegs each year, though it’s in the millions. Most releases sell just a few thousand copies; popular ones, such as Prince’s “Black Album” (now legitimately released), have passed 100,000 copies.

(The introduction of CD technology in the ‘80s meant that bootleg sound quality - often spotty on vinyl bootlegs in the ‘70s - could rival that of legitimate releases.)

While many artists deny it, pressure from bootleggers has pushed them to release some of the material legitimately.

Springsteen added four new songs to his recent greatest-hits CD.

“By coincidence, we already have two of them (on bootlegs),” noted Erik Flannigan, who writes a bootleg column, “Going Underground,” for the International CD Exchange newsletter in Santa Monica, Calif. “Clearly he knew we had them and wanted to give them to us because we asked for them.”

Frank Zappa put out his own bootlegs on his “Beat the Boots” series. Van Morrison has taken songs directly from bootlegs to put on import singles. Dylan’s “Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3” included extensive material that collectors have had for years.

Dylan, in fact, was one of the first to give in, releasing “The Basement Tapes” in 1975 after they’d widely circulated as “The Great White Wonder” on bootleg vinyl. The Rolling Stones similarly released “Get Yer Ya-Yas Out” to battle the underground “Liver Than You’ll Ever Be.”

Prince finally released the widely bootlegged “Black Album” just last year. Neil Young’s “Stringman” was out for years before he finally officially released it on his “MTV Unplugged” disc. Paul McCartney released his “Unplugged” performance because he knew if he didn’t, bootleggers would. The Beatles’ “BBC Sessions” set from last year actually was taken partly from bootlegs, because the BBC itself didn’t keep copies of the historic broadcasts. Led Zeppelin put bootlegged cuts on its 1991 box set.

“With all artists, there’s always that moment you know you’ve made it because you’ve been bootlegged,” Flannigan said. “The fact that anyone cares to that level has to be flattering.”

Some go as far as encouraging it.

“We have a lot of bands right now - Sugar is a great example - that are just a step away from openly condoning it,” Flannigan said.

Bands such as the Grateful Dead, Black Crowes, Metallica, Page and Plant and others have officially stated that fans are free to tape their shows.

“You just don’t do radio broadcasts of that nature unless you expect people to make CDs of them,” Flannigan noted.”They’re still in the back corner, still behind the counter, they’re still mixed in so you can’t easily find them,” Flannigan said. “With the stores selling them now, it’s almost like you’re part of a little club. A smart customer knows what this store is doing.”

While the Recording Industry Association of America, a musicindustry trade group, makes examples of sellers from time to time with federal prosecution, most happen only after a disgruntled employee calls in to tip off authorities.

“Most of the time someone has been provoked to make that call,” Flannigan said.

Don’t be afraid, however, to order boots by mail or buy them in stores. You’re not breaking the law; only sellers are.

“We never go after the consumer, ever,” said Alexandre Walsh, mediarelations director for the Recording Industry Association of America. “We just try to educate them.”

It’s hard to go after the sellers, too. Most discs are manufactured overseas. Lax copyright laws in Europe, particularly Luxembourg and Italy, have made production there technically legal - so there’s been a glut of the underground CDs since the late ‘80s. The laws have changed now, but it may not alter the situation.

“In the end, it just comes down to, is anyone going to do anything about it?” Flannigan said. “The problem in Italy right now is there really is no one to enforce this.”

The quality of the discs, both sound and packaging, has gotten so good that they’re often better than legitimate releases. Thus it’s tough to prove that sellers in the United States really knew they were dealing in illegal discs.

The RIAA even admits it’s somewhat of a losing battle. Besides, the group has got a bigger problem - counterfeit CDs. These are fake, and often inferior, copies of an artist’s legitimate release.

“We’re concerned about bootlegging. It’s against the law. But we can’t devote the same sort of manpower and programs to bootlegging as we do to counterfeit cassettes,” she said.

Bootleg seizures in 1994 were fewer than 20,000, while counterfeits will top 2 million.

“It still affects legitimate sales, no matter what fans say,” Walsh said. “The artist is not the only one who gets hurt.” Songwriters, producers and other people who make their living from royalties don’t get paid when music is bootlegged, she noted.