The first bootleg VHS recording of a concert I ever owned came from a local flea market. While digging through a pile of video tapes at Old Paris Flea Market back in the mid 1990s, I found a VHS recording of a Pantera concert that had taken place at the Diamond Ballroom (a show I had actually attended). The tape was priced at $20, but for $30 I got that one and a second tape (Metallica’s 1992 Oklahoma City show). That’s how it all started for me.<\/p>\n

While fan-made audio recordings of concerts have been around for as long as audio recordings and concerts have been around, bootleg video recordings of concerts is (or at least was then) a relatively new phenom. In the 1980s, consumer-quality video cameras were simply too large to sneak into a concert; most of the videos from that era were made by somebody “on the inside,” either by someone with connections to the venue or the band itself. But by the late 80s\/early 90s, smaller, handheld video cameras were readily available, and being sneaked into concert venues everywhere. The concert video bootleg was born.<\/p>\n

“Tape Traders,” people who swap recordings of concerts, have also been around forever. Back in the day, you could find these people advertising in the classified section of popular music magazines. The original intent was for people to simply swap their concert recordings, with no money changing hands. “I’ll send you a recording of Concert X if you’ll send me a recording of Concert Y.” Each person would dub a copy of the concert they owned, package it up and put it into the mail, and wait for the other person’s package to arrive.<\/p>\n

In the mid 90s, when everyone began wading in to the World Wide Web, both audio and video bootleg tape traders moved online. The idea was very much the same; tape traders would post a list of their tape collections online, and wait for other traders to contact them. Deals would be agreed upon through e-mail, and then it was the responsibility of each person to make a copy of their VHS tape and mail it to the other person. <\/p>\n

Because all of these videos were being shipped via snail mail and sight-unseen, descriptions of the videos were very important. Along with the name of the band, the date of the show, and the length of the recording, you also had to list how the show was recorded (cam or pro shot), the quality of the video (just like a report card, from A+ to F-), and any additional notes (“This is the show where James Hetfield caught on fire.”) Because of all this analog dubbing, knowing what “generation” a tape was was also often noted. The original recording would be considered a first generation copy; each copy after that added a generation. A fifth generation copy (or, a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy) wasn’t likely to look as good as an earlier generation copy of the same recording. One thing I learned early on was that not everyone used the same rating system. My idea if “good quality” was obviously different than other people’s. To some people, it meant that at least one member of the band appeared in the video most of the time. Quality was all over the place. Often times the band would be out of focus, but the guy’s head standing just in front of the camera would be crystal clear. Other times the video would be crisp but the audio would be, well, inaudible. <\/p>\n

The brand of tape used was important, I remember that. Most people preferred Maxwell tapes, either Silver or Gold quality, so that’s what we used too. The default recording speed was always 2 hour mode (SP), to ensure the best quality. <\/p>\n

My friend Stephen was the first of us to venture into this new hobby, and before long he had dragged me into the hobby with him. Our friend Scott soon became the third member of our tape trading team. The idea was simple; if the three of us combined our collections into one list, it would look three times as big. The three of us were collecting different genres of videos, so our list was pretty diverse. If I had to pick one artist to represent each of our collections, Stephen’s would be Tori Amos, Scott’s would be Social Distortion, and mine would be Metallica. <\/p>\n

As new traders with small collections, we began supplementing our collections by purchasing video bootlegs. Several of the independent record stores around town sold video bootlegs. Like the flea market the going price was around $20. I remember visiting Shadowplay Records in Norman and picking up video bootlegs from Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, Metallica, and the Beastie Boys. $100 for five videos was steep, but it added 5 titles to our fledgling list and gave us some much needed trading fodder. The other guys were doing the same thing. I remember visiting a travelling record convention on multiple occasions and watching Scott and Stephen plop down loads of cash for bootleg KISS videos. <\/p>\n

So, that’s kind of how it got started. With our list of bootlegs posted out on the Internet, either people would contact us, or we would contact other people, and set up trades. One logistic we had to work out was, did we ship our tapes at the same time other people send their tapes, or does one of us send first? I think the protocol we used was, if we initiated a trade with someone, we sent first; if someone contacted us, we asked them to ship first. One exception to this rule was, early on we learned the hard way that the heavy metal traders (the ones wanting to trade for Slipknot and Coal Chamber and Korn bootlegs) were the most likely to rip you off and never send you anything. We dubbed these people the “Korn People.” Anytime we were dealing with Korn people, we would ask them to ship first. A few balked (and those were most likely the ones that were going to rip us off anyway), but most people were okay with it. Eventually we had collected so many bootlegs that if a deal fell through, it didn’t bother us much.<\/p>\n

To keep up with all of this video tape dubbing, I bought a dual-deck VCR from Go Video which I used exclusively for dubbing bootleg videos. The VCR cost $300, and supported “one touch” video dubbing. All I had to do to copy a tape was insert the original tape in the top, a blank tape in the bottom, and press a single button. Supposedly the hardwired connection between the two decks offered better quality than connecting two VCRs with RCA cables. As you can tell by this picture, (a) I still own the VCR, and (b) it’s collecting dust out in my garage.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

One thing I started doing for all my bootlegs was making covers for them — not for the ones I mailed out, just for the ones in my personal collection. Many years ago I acquired several hundred empty VHS clam shell cases from a Blockbuster that went out of business. Using those cases, along with a little PhotoShop wizardry, I made custom covers for almost all of my bootlegs. On the front of each one I’d put a picture of the band and the band’s logo, and on the spine I would put the specific show’s information. They looked like this:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

They didn’t add anything to the value, but they certainly looked much nicer sitting on my shelf.<\/p>\n

For those of you that have read my book Commodork<\/a>, you could draw parallels between trading software and trading video bootlegs. When I first started trading these VHS tapes, I would watch most of them all the way through. At some point though, at least for me, I was trading for trading’s sake. I found myself trading videos sometimes just to add a new band to our “roster.” After a while I realized I was doing a lot of trading of the videos and copying of the videos and cover-making for the videos, but not a lot of watching of the videos. That’s about the time I threw in the towel.<\/p>\n

Even though I stopped trading video bootlegs years ago, I’ve held on to my collection. Financially, the collection is worth $0. I don’t sell illegal copies of things, and let’s face it, who wants to buy a bunch of old, bootleg VHS tapes? Bootlegs moved into the digital realm long ago; the same recordings we were trading on cassette and VHS tapes years ago first moved to CDs and DVDs, and eventually made their way online. Audio bootlegs of concerts in mp3 format are trivial to find; video bootlegs are a little more difficult to track down, but they’re out there if you know where to look.<\/p>\n

When we moved, I put all of my concert videos into two big plastic tubs. Here’s one of the two:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Last night, on a whim, I threw 99% of them into the garbage. I pulled out the recordings of the Oklahoma City Pantera, Metallica, and Guns and Roses shows, all shows I attended. I also pulled out the couple of Life of Agony tapes. That’s five tapes saved, and about 150 in the garbage. I’m sure I haven’t watched any of these tapes in ten years. I considered digitizing some of them, but I couldn’t talk myself into dedicated the time to do a single one, I talked myself out of it. <\/p>\n

And that, they say, is the end of that. Good night, Oklahoma City!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first bootleg VHS recording of a concert I ever owned came from a local flea market. While digging through a pile of video tapes at Old Paris Flea Market back in the mid 1990s, I found a VHS recording of a Pantera concert that had taken place at the Diamond Ballroom (a show I had actually attended). The tape was priced at $20, but for $30 I got that one and a second tape (Metallica’s 1992 Oklahoma City show). That’s how it all started for me. While fan-made audio recordings of concerts have been around for as long as… (read more)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4345\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}