A Guest Music Thread [Joe Mannix]

What do you think of when you hear "bootleg" in the context of music? I usually think of cassette tapes with hand-scrawled labels or CD-Rs that will rot unless quickly backed up. I might even think of "a bunch of MP3s someone recorded at a show.' What I didn't think of until recently, though, was "professional-looking, commercially-pressed CD with liner notes and label information."

I have been sanitizing and updating my digital music library and stumbled across an album that I just couldn't find anywhere. It wasn't on the big metadata services and when I searched for less-well-known track names, various search engine AIs responded along the lines of "that artist never did a song by that name, but these other artists did." Yet I had the CD in my hands. It was professionally manufactured, not a CD-R. It was a mainstream artist, not an unknown independent. It had a record label and a catalogue number printed on the liner notes. No barcode, but that isn't too weird.

So I looked up the catalogue number and still got nothing. Going for broke, I just looked up the record label, hoping I could find some reference based on the label. I finally got a legitimate hit. It wasn't a label, it was a pseudo-label - a European company that produced and distributed bootlegs. It was referenced as a "bootleg label," and that's all they did. They did it very professionally, but the reason I could find nothing about this album on the internet is that the album doesn't technically exist. It is a pirate album.

I have some bootlegs in my collection and I know what they are, but this was a first for me! I don't think "serious, professional product" when I think "bootleg." Expectations status: subverted.

Do you have any bootlegs in your collection? How's the production value, both of the physical medium and the recording?

NOTE: As always, the intro is just a conversation starter if needed. You're welcome to go off-topic, just please keep it to the world of music!

Exceptional Live Performances
KT Tunstall is very good at using a loop/effects pedal when she needs to. Shortly after her big hit "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree," she did a performance of the song for Rolling Stone (remember when they sometimes covered music?). Just her. She spends about 45 seconds recording loops and setting up her effects pedals for the non-guitar sounds - tambourine, percussion (after a fashion), non-lyric vocalizations, etc. - to build the soundstage for the song. Then she goes to work with guitar and voice to perform it, manipulating the effects pedals as needed to bring in the other sounds. It sure doesn't sound like the album version, but she uses effects pedals to an unusual degree to pull it off.

Great Covers
When she isn't being deliberately inscrutable, Fiona Apple can really belt it out and she has an incredible, bluesy voice. She did a cover of the Beatles classic "Across the Universe" for the 1998 movie Pleasantville. It's very different from the original and I think Fiona Apple's sultry voice is particularly suited to it.

Cool Deliberately Pointless Music Videos
Following the release of 1990's Bossanova, the song "Velouria" became an unexpected hit and the band was invited to perform on the BBC's Top of the Pops program. They hit a snag, however, in that the song had no music video and Top of the Pops was open only to singles with music videos. To satisfy the requirement, the band threw together a cheap, pointless music video consisting of a single shot lasting about 20 seconds, slowed down (poorly) until it was the duration of the song. They didn't make it to the show while "Velouria" was still on the charts, but they did end up making perhaps the worst music video of all time as a means to an end.

Arbitrary picks from my collection
In no particular order and no implications of quality, here are four songs I've heard reccently.

Andrew WK - She is Beautiful
It's hard to believe that he's a classically-trained pianist since childhood, because he mostly makes simple party rock.

The Back Keys - Little Black Submarines
This is one of their tracks where they really don't sound bigger than they are. They're a duo, and this song sounds like it. Not a bad thing in the slightest.

Band of Skulls - The Devil Takes Care of His Own
Simple rock and roll from the UK. Unusually, it's from this century.

Scylla - Afterglow
After Curve broke up for the first time, Toni Halliday and other musicians formed Scylla, toured a bit in the UK and recorded a demo. It was never released, but thrived as a bootleg. Scylla even made its way into some movie soundtracks despite having never had a formal album release.

Have a great rest of your weekend!

posted by Joe Mannix at 07:30 PM

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