vitriol said:

OldFriends4Sale said:

Oldest boots I have are from 1976

I think the OP is asking about the date outtakes started circulating, not about the recording dates of the circulating stuff.

You can say that you got outtakes from 1975 (that started circulating like in 95 with the Studio Nights set if I'm correct) but you don't have any Prince bootleg record released in 1976.

Or maybe I was reading too much into a simple typo and you meant 1986...

o ok

so I got the 2nd part right

Cool, I love these lovely memories of the good old days I already was very exciting to get my first boots in 91-92 (SO expensive !!!) but it must have been even cooler in 88

It's funny because in France there was sort of a bootleg invasion in 93-95: just EVERY record store, including huge ones, had them for every artist, then the powers that be got mad and fined the store owners' asses, and boots became rare again (only to resurface online after a few more years).

Makes me think about a story, a friend of mine told it to me back then, so even though i trusted him it MIGHT be a hoax, i can't guarantee it's accurate.

Anyway there was this guy in France in the early 90's, who somehow got tapes of outtakes from the USA and made boots outta 'em (possibly the "colors" series i ain't sure), and according to my friend who knew him, this dude was bragging about how he deliberately spoiled the sound quality so he'd be the only one with crystal clear copies for a few years, and then he could rerelease them again in good quality and sell 'em again to the suckers who bought the first releases. This kind of mentality ain't surprising as it was very common amongst french Prince fans back then (you wouldn't believe the suckers i met at the concerts ).

I always wondered if the sound quality always was bad for the same reasons (spoiled in order to rerelease it later, and most outtakes WERE rereleased with great sound) or if it sometimes was just because they were copies of copies of copies.

[Edited 8/12/22 12:08pm]

I don't think quality was marred on purpose. Maybe a couple of times.

What was an usual practice at the time was putting some kind of 'watermarks' somewhere in the songs so that when they were played the original bootleger could say 'Oh, yes. That's MY version, the version I freed'.

Unfortunately, most of the people who freed interesting quantities of outtakes suffer from severe anality, ego-tripping, etc...

But we must take into account that sound-tweaking softwares had a huge development in recent years. So the same people would release the raw sources first and then re-release the clean versions. Over and over.

vitriol said:

I don't think quality was marred on purpose. Maybe a couple of times.

What was an usual practice at the time was putting some kind of 'watermarks' somewhere in the songs so that when they were played the original bootleger could say 'Oh, yes. That's MY version, the version I freed'.

Unfortunately, most of the people who freed interesting quantities of outtakes suffer from severe anality, ego-tripping, etc...

But we must take into account that sound-tweaking softwares had a huge development in recent years. So the same people would release the raw sources first and then re-release the clean versions. Over and over.

I know a guy who would do this. He would do it for mutliple reasons:

- To mark "his" source

- to have a better copy than circulating

- because he is an ASS

Thanks God at least one dude who's got first generations tapes said here that he was cleaning them and that they'll surface online after some time (i suspect BOC was from him but i can't say), and this person seems to be trying to convince other persons who got stuff he doesn't have to do the same.

There's also this dude who made a promise to a dead friend not to release the tapes he got from him, and i find it really sad that he will keep his promise (i can understand but you know, what if Max Brod had kept his promise and not released Kafka's books after Kafka died...? Sometimes History with a big "H" is beyond personal promises...)

I wonder, besides better copies of songs we have, how many songs that we DON'T have at ALL are in possession of collectors and will surface?

And i keep hoping that Prince will finally come to his senses and release everything himself someday

It's true that some keepers of outtakes did EQ them intentionally poorly or flip stereo channels or only released small mp3 versions on purpose.

Hopefully more stuff will come out! Free releases are the bomb!

But back in the day of heavy physical bootleg collecting (starting with Black Album and Chocolate Box and Charade on vinyl) we were happy to pay for new stuff too.

Live tapes were circulating from 1982, and big time in 84.

The first pressed boot was "From 1999 till now", which actually came out in early 1985.

The first studio outtake I remember hearing was an 3rd gen tape of "Heaven" in early 86, shortly followed by the recordings that would become Charade is late 86. They were often bootlegged with the Electrifying Mojo interview.

This was the first version that of charade that still had the Old friends / All My dreams properly segued.

By this point, pressed LP' of may Parade shows were out.

The studio boots of the 1970's didn't surface until 91.

Prince did talk about tapes with songs that he would give 2 people to listen too, in a 1985 interview

So I'm assuming in the early 1980's there were 'boots' all over the place

vitriol said:

I don't think quality was marred on purpose. Maybe a couple of times.

What was an usual practice at the time was putting some kind of 'watermarks' somewhere in the songs so that when they were played the original bootleger could say 'Oh, yes. That's MY version, the version I freed'.

Unfortunately, most of the people who freed interesting quantities of outtakes suffer from severe anality, ego-tripping, etc...

But we must take into account that sound-tweaking softwares had a huge development in recent years. So the same people would release the raw sources first and then re-release the clean versions. Over and over.

I know for a fact that T marked almost all of his songs in some way from flipping the input channels to pasting fills in places they didn't exist but you wouldn't notice offhand.

I also know Liberation/Richard Dower purposely augmented tracks like "Fuchsia Light" to be jacked up.

Edit: Not to mention tracks like "Baby GoGo" which are purposely edited so that the full version doesn't exist.

[Edited 4/16/11 10:41am]

Lib didn't 'augment' Fuchsia Light. He just had a portion of the song and he slowed it down to make it last longer. He absolutely fucked it. It would've been better put out 'as-was', even if it would only be a snippet, but correctly pitched.

My first vinyl was the "Jack U Off" LP, back in 1991.

I kept playing "Do Me Baby" over and over again!!

I never bought boots but always shared them on tape with other prince fans. Most of it were concert tapes but I think I got my first album bootleg in 1990 and it was called Charade. Later I got more titles like Crystal Ball and Camille and then came the 3 cd set Jewel box containing much of what was released up untill then from the 80's. But then came Yellow, Red, Blue and Neon somewhere around 92/93 I think. And then Prince started releasing a lot of stuff himself in 94/95/9697, pretty much taking away the need for me to activerly collect bootlegs, and then I kind of lost interest in him (NPS, rave) and never really got back into collecting bootlegs anymore. Not with the internet either.

This thread inspired me to go look through my old vinyl boots.

The oldest ones I have are Charade and the Royal Jewels set. Also Fuzztone Reality (the 1LP version on light blue vinyl) and More Intimate Moments, let's not forget about that one! It has P's version of Baby You're a Trip and Around The World In A Day #2 tacked onto the end...

Mistadobalina said:

vitriol said:

On vinyl some of the oldest must be The Chocolate Box or Camille's Crystal ball. As well as Charade.

those three were pretty much the first ones I got on vinyl back in the days

Same here, I think they were the first 3 that I bought... I started collecting Prince bootlegs around 87/88 and they began to surface on vinyl quite regularly around this time although the sound quality was generally awful. I'm not sure which was the first ever vinyl bootleg though and no doubt there were tapes circulating at least a couple of years prior to the vinyls. My guess is that the market for unreleased Prince tunes would only have started after the 1999 or Purple Rain albums.

Adrianus said:

wishuhvn said:

...I miss those searches of record stores for Prince boots...It all seems to easy to get now...The search was half the fun...

the price was triple, though

i feel the same way...

me too. i made some great friends collecting boots 88-90. i got into prince in the period between sott and lovesexy. remember feeling spoiled as i bought one after another amazing studio album and then collected the equally brilliant outtakes.

SquirrelMeat said:

Live tapes were circulating from 1982, and big time in 84.

The first pressed boot was "From 1999 till now", which actually came out in early 1985.

That's pretty cool, a couple of years earlier than I thought.

I got a bootleg called Crucial from a guy named Mathew who lived in Los Angeles. I think he and a guy named Nathan were making bootleg cds wich i thought was so cool. The cd turned out to have some tracks that they made up on it that they claimed were really prince but werent wich made me realize that they were not in it for the honesty and fun of it but they were both ripping people off but that is what bootleggers sometimes do. I heard they made a bunch of other cd bootlegs but i didnt have much money at the time and didnt want to get ripped again. That was my first experience. Those two dudes popped my prince cherry. lol

... my first boot:

& it's been ON ever since ... GREAT thread by the way

^but that one is from the ending of the 90s (97 or 98).

We're discussing the earliest ones here.

vitriol said:

^but that one is from the ending of the 90s (97 or 98).

We're discussing the earliest ones here.

... my bad (and I know), I was just addin' to the convo with my first boot

I really enjoyed reading these story's about bootlegs [I hope other people post more stories]...but I [who didn't get into bootlegs until 3 years ago] think that getting bootlegs for free is cool! Look, if Prince isn't making any money off his own work, why should somebody else get paid for them? Now [I do have to ask this btw], if these [lame] bootleggers would release these boots in the prestine condition they claim to be in, would they be worth buying? Because if so.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

gunner82 said:

I really enjoyed reading these story's about bootlegs [I hope other people post more stories]...but I [who didn't get into bootlegs until 3 years ago] think that getting bootlegs for free is cool! Look, if Prince isn't making any money off his own work, why should somebody else get paid for them? Now [I do have to ask this btw], if these [lame] bootleggers would release these boots in the prestine condition they claim to be in, would they be worth buying? Because if so.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

If you can afford them and if you don't mind a bootlegger making your $ off Prince's work, then of course SOME boots are worth buying.

But, considering the quality of most and the ease of downloading, I wouldn't buy many.

Maybe download everything you can and seek out your favorites, the ones you KNOW will be worth it because you've already checked em out, and buy those only?

gunner82 said:

I really enjoyed reading these story's about bootlegs [I hope other people post more stories]...but I [who didn't get into bootlegs until 3 years ago] think that getting bootlegs for free is cool! Look, if Prince isn't making any money off his own work, why should somebody else get paid for them? Now [I do have to ask this btw], if these [lame] bootleggers would release these boots in the prestine condition they claim to be in, would they be worth buying? Because if so.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

There is no need to buy any bootleg these days.

If you are patient, then even the pressed labels releases appear on the interweb to download for free after a short while.

This is 2011, there is no need to pay for any bootleg recording.

I got the Black Album around Christmas of 1988 from my roommate in college.

The Nashville music scene was floating with Prince boots by the Spring of 1990. I dated a girl whose father was a WB VP in Nashville and she had two cassettes with a WB catalog number of the original Crystal Ball album. I have never seen or heard since of CB ever being pressed with an official catalog number but she had one. I suspect now that it was a boot and if it was it was the most official boot that I ever saw.

^^ And if it's a nice printed physical cd you want, then download the content (including high quality artwork) and do it yourself.

I remember one of my closest friends was given an official Black Album before it was withdrawn. He had been doing some of Prince's taxes as I recall and it was so cool to see it, but he wouldn't play it for the longest time. I offered money for it, but he wouldn't do it. Eventually he made a tape of it and that was the version I had until someone started circulating a copy of the official withdrawn CD. Those were among the early 'bootleg' songs I knew. I was always impressed with how much music Prince recorded and was a bootleg snob! I remember telling many people that his best stuff was his unreleased stuff, but now in retrospect, there are a few songs that were amazing, but I'd prefer most of his released material to the bootleg songs. I still love the novelty of the unreleased music, but my love is for the 'find' and not as much for the actual song. There are exceptions (Moonbeam Levels, etc.) but, in my opinion, there isn't an outtake out there that is as good as Cream, or When Doves Cry or Little Red Corvette.

Of course, that is just my opinion.