Chris Robinson on Bootlegs - article from 95
by Chris Robinson You can't bottle great live rock & roll. It just happens, and it's good to know there are people around you with tape recorders to capture it. I buy live bootleg cds and tapes all the time - collecting them creeps up on you like any good obsession. You can never have enough. I've got lots and lots of Grateful Deat bootlegs. I also have 27 Led Zeppelin bootlegs, as well as ones by Little Feat - some of them are hard to find. I don't know how many Dylan bootlegs I own. I've also got Neil Young bootlegs, and tons of Stones tapes with amazing stuff on them. One of my favorites is Bag Of Reds by Little Feat, from a show back in '76 or '77. "Willin" is really good on this one. And they do "Duke Of Earl", but they go "Reds, reds, reds...bag of reds, reds, reds..." Of my Zeppelin stuff, there's a great on from 1969, Led Zeppelin Plays Pure Blues, when they played at the Texas International Pop Festival. It's only a 30m set, but wow - "Since I've Been Loving You," "Communication Breakdown," and "I Can't Quit You Baby." Jimmmy Page sounds just like a Texas blues guitar player, but, of course, with his own slant on it. Incredibly heavy blues. Deadheads will always argue about which Dead bootleg is better than the rest, but I like a lot of different periods of the Dead, so I'm not picky. There's a great one I have from the Fillmore East in 1970, where the Dead are joined for "Lovelight" by Peter Green (then of Fleetwood Mac) and Duane and Greg Allman. I also have this bootleg (unsurpassed) of David Crosby with Jerry Garcia when they did this thing in 1969 called David and the Dorks. And it coincided with David's If I Could Only Remember My Name album (one of my favorite records). Anyway, they did some gigs, and I found this CD not long ago with this song called "The Wall" on it: you can hear Jerry trying to teach the band "Bertha," and it's great to listen to David trying to find the harmony. The other day someone gave me tapes of the Flying Burrito Brothers from the Avalon Ballroom back in 1969, with the Dead on the same show. It's cool, because every once in a while there's an FM DJ's voice going: "You're with FM whatever tonight, bringing you the Flying Burrito Brothers from the Avalon Ballroom," and "You just heard a set by the Grateful Dead, and tonight's engineer is...." The Burritos sound terrific on this. They do "Hot Burrito #1" and "Hot Burrito #2," country medleys, and a rock & roll medley with "Lucille." Crazy shit. Another one I recommend from that era is the Byrd's Boston Tea Party. The sound isn't that goood, but no matter: there's not a lot of live recordings out there with Clarence White on them. He was such a phenomenal bass player. They do stuff like "Baby Blue" and "Lover of the Bayou." My new thing is trying to find live Sly and the Family Stone tapes. I have a bootleg viceo of them on The Dick Cavett Show: the interview and the performance. I have a lot of other TV footage - Little Feat, Parliament, and some great Neil Young stuff. I found it on bootleg videos I bought over in Japan, which is generally a great place to buy bootlegs. I also own a lot of Neil Young's live acoustic recordings. He's always so funny between songs. I've got good Stones stuff too. Most of the Stones stuff I like is studio outtakds, the excess stuff. You get to hear songs that they didnt' release when they originally recorded them - but then pieces of these songs will turn up in other songs ten years later. I also collect tapes by the Jayhawks and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, who we've invited on tour with us. I like to listen to what my friends are doing. On live bootlegs, you often get to hear musicians really stretch outside the studio, playing longer versions of songs and building on the soul of the songs. It's that element of surprise - you don't know what direction a jam is going to go. As a musician, it's like looking at a map when you want to get to a certain place. How many roads can you take to get to that place? There's a bunch of them, right? It's the same with music. When we show up for a gig, it's like we're on a road map just trying to get to the same place. It's worth taking off and exploring other musical avenues just to find that magical place every night. And if someone happens to get a particularly good Black Crowes night on tape, you can send it to me care of American Recordings, okay? We just want to keep things in a more communal sort of place. That's really it - the reason we've invited the people who come to our shows to bring along their tape recorders. We like the idea of a bootleg-friendly environment. We don't care what the record companies think. It's for the people who are really into the music and who've supported us for five years. If someone wants to come tape our show and take it home with them, I mean, it's their evening too - then that's cool. I think we're a better live band than we are at making records anyway. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ What a great article by Chris!! I love this band because we really love music the same way. What a great read