I would imagin 90% of us own them. They're so easy to get hold of, and the venues and methods proliferate exponentially with no end in sight. So, I'm assuming most of you who are reading this have at least a few dozen (or hundred) boots.

What's the first bootleg you ever owned?

What's the first you listened to?

The Black Album in 1987. I think if you did a poll at least half the people on here would say that. I had a few different versions actually. I think first I bought a cassette, then I had a record that played at the wrong speed, then I got a CD. I tossed the cassette and the CD when the official version came out, but I kept the record for sentimental reasons. It's the one with Prince from the "U Got The Look" video on the cover. I wrote the song titles on the label myself. Haven't tried to play it recently, though.

In my search for the Black Album, I actually came across and purchased another boot first:

When Doves Cry It's A Sign Of The Times, a double LP of a live show from the Sign "O" The Times Tour. Still have it...

Stymie said:

I've never bought boots and never will but like a lot of folks the first bootleg i ever heard was the black album. I really can't remember te frst one I owned.

If I had known anyone who had it, I wouldn't have bought it either. It's the only Prince bootleg I ever paid money for.

electricberet said:

Stymie said:

electricberet said:

If I had known anyone who had it, I wouldn't have bought it either. It's the only Prince bootleg I ever paid money for.

Luckily I had a close friend who was a prince fanatic. She had tons of prince boots and took me to a store on the north side of Chicago that sold all kinds of prince boots and videos. It was through her that I found out people were selling this type of stuff through the mail as well.

I lived in a small town in Colorado at the time and nobody sold any Prince bootlegs anywhere nearby. The local record store didn't even stock his 12" singles, so I had to special-order those. I'm not sure exactly where I found the Black Album cassette or the record (now that I think about it, I might have dubbed the cassette from the record myself), but I'm sure I got it in the mail through some kind of newsletter. It was around this time that I discovered Goldmine magazine, which is how I finally was able to buy the "Let's Work" 12" single, which was out of print already.

I did buy the CD in a record store in Denver when we went there on a family trip. I was shocked that they were selling it so openly.

It was 1987 and I'm at a Jesse johnson concert at the Roxy in NYC and a friend who worked at WB hands me a perfectly crystal clear cassette of The Black Album. It was a great gift as I was headed off soon to finish HS back in Cali...

electricberet said:

The Black Album in 1987. I think if you did a poll at least half the people on here would say that.

Exactly. After reading about The Black Album in Rolling Stone (remember this was back before the online fan community was big) and other publications, I HAD to track it down. At the time I was a 16 year old kid with no clue of how to find bootlegs in Detroit... until I walked into this tiny record shop in a strip mall in my home town of Madison Heights and what was in the Prince vinyl section but The Black Album. My heart started beating fast, my hands started shaking. I felt like I was doing something dirty taking that to the counter but not only did they have that they had something else there called "Charade" on vinyl. Again, this was back when info was not easy to come by like it is now online.

I bought The Black Album, it was that excellent vinyl version with the all black cover with Prince embossed on it, great sound quality, then went back up there later for "Charade" and my sickness had started. Then I found another store in Clawson that had bootlegs for days and it was all over. Thankfully I still have all those vinyl bootlegs, more for the memories than anything.

Like most folks, and I touched on this in another thread, it was a cassette of the black album back in '89. Bought mine at Record Time from DJ Overdose. (It was nearly 25 years ago, so I think it's safe to talk about this - hey Detroiters, who else remembers the Dance room?)

The cool thing was since the black album fit on one side of a 90 minute tape, i got "More Intimate Moments" on the other side. Loved that piano session, plus it had P's version of Baby You're A Trip and Around The World In A Day #2 as bonus tracks. We still haven't gotten a decently upgraded copy of that one, have we? I'm talking about the one that's an Extended version of the LP cut, not the one with the 4/4 drums.

Anyway, that's how it all started. The 2nd (or 3rd) boot I ever picked up was the blue vinyl pressing of "Fuzztone Reality". 2 versions of soulpsychedelicide, a version of Glam Slam '91, plus some great '83 stuff like the studio version of The Bird, the Vanity 6 version of Sex Shooter and the instrumental version of Possessed.

Then, the motherlode... "Royal Jewels", who remembers that one? Was it Royal Jewels or Crown Jewels? It was on Blue Bird Records and had all the Chocolate Box stuff, plus the Family Demos, a version of Crystal Ball, some Purple Rain alternates and a bunch more, a 3 record set. None of it in good quality but I dug it all. We're really living in the golden age of boots when so much stuff has been freed in such great quality compared to the 90s.

[Edited 9/3/12 22:30pm]

I've bought some stinkers as well as some gems. I think the first was actually TBA, I was desperate for it, so I saved my pocket money for that, and I was kind of hooked afterwards so I did snap up anything and everything - some others I got very early were Princepower and Big Tall Wall - the sound quality was complete shit, although Princepower (or it's 'sequel' one had a yellowish cover, the other red) had the version of Positivity with the JM Silk rap, and it didn't really show up elsewhere for a while.

I remember Globequake in a round dark green/grey? can (like the Batman limited edition), and I had the Chocolate Box on 3LP vinyl. Those were my earliest. I ditched many of the crappier studio boots once I got the 2 Jewel Box sets. I LIVED for record fairs in those days, I would travel all over every weekend making contacts with other fans for trading etc.

I bought The Black Album & He's Got The Look (more for the scary cover art than the quality or content) as a college freshman in 1992. Revolver Records used to be located at 45 West 8th Street in the Village in NYC, but it's been gone for years.

I bought TBA at Toones in Allentown, PA in 1988. That store has been gone for a long time. I really miss it. The guy who worked there was a cool dude. He used to let me borrow his bootleg VHS tapes of Prince for like two weeks at a time. He used to call everybody who went into the store "Buddy". Eventually, I came to think of him as "Toonesbuddy". I spent a LOT of money at Toones.

Choccie Box, The Jewel boxes, some SOTT soundboard.. Laments?

For the most part, they sounded like shit. Thank fuck for progress.

NouveauDance said:

I LIVED for record fairs in those days, I would travel all over every weekend making contacts with other fans for trading etc.

Me too. It was like an event. I rememeber the fairs in my city used to be big, really busy affairs. You could get anything. These days the fairs in the same city are laughably small. Not their fault of course, it's just a sign of the times.

I attended one of the big bi annual London fairs a couple of years back. Even that was fairly average. Great if The Beatles, Elvis and Led Zepp are your thing, but I was met with mostly quizzical looks and shrugged shoulders every time I mentioned Prince.

TheDigitalGardener said:

NouveauDance said:

I LIVED for record fairs in those days, I would travel all over every weekend making contacts with other fans for trading etc.

Me too. It was like an event. I rememeber the fairs in my city used to be big, really busy affairs. You could get anything. These days the fairs in the same city are laughably small. Not their fault of course, it's just a sign of the times.

I attended one of the big bi annual London fairs a couple of years back. Even that was fairly average. Great if The Beatles, Elvis and Led Zepp are your thing, but I was met with mostly quizzical looks and shrugged shoulders every time I mentioned Prince.

Don't tell me. They are asking like a tener for any of those holographic CD-Singles as if they were worth anthing else than peanuts, lol

psyche2 said:

TheDigitalGardener said:

Me too. It was like an event. I rememeber the fairs in my city used to be big, really busy affairs. You could get anything. These days the fairs in the same city are laughably small. Not their fault of course, it's just a sign of the times.

I attended one of the big bi annual London fairs a couple of years back. Even that was fairly average. Great if The Beatles, Elvis and Led Zepp are your thing, but I was met with mostly quizzical looks and shrugged shoulders every time I mentioned Prince.

Don't tell me. They are asking like a tener for any of those holographic CD-Singles as if they were worth anthing else than peanuts, lol

Yeah, the Prince items they did have were quite expensive and fairly hum drum. Maybe my expectations were too high, but I expected to find rarer items...some thing a bit more special than what they had.

Charade, in late 1991.

Must have been either Black Album or a Lovesexy rehearsal. I think I might have gotten them at the same time from a street peddler in Dublin.

The memories you guys are bringing back...

After When Doves Cry It's A Sign Of The Times, I finally found the Black Album, but my first copy was the one with the U Got The Look cover that played too fast. I immediately replaced it with the ove with the all black embossed cover. In those days, I got a lot of the other vinyl titles you guys have mentioned: Royal Jewels 3LP, He's Got The Look and something called (I think) The Pink and White Album or The Polka Dot Album that was just He's Got The Look in a different cover, Just My Imagination, Small Club 3LP, Camille's Crystal Ball, Night Clubbing, New Power Generation Radio Show, The Back Album which was really a pirate (as opposed to bootleg) record collecting a bunch of B-Sides that were already out of print, those were the days, indeed!

Record stores where you had to speak in code, like you were trying to buy drugs or something, to get the clerks to pull out the hidden stack under the counter. You couldn't call them bootlegs, you had to call them imports, or they would act like they didn't know what you were talking about. I eventually even worked at one of these record stores and had to play the same game. Hilarious.

Record conventions where there were so many Prince bootlegs to choose from (not to mention rare singles I might not have collected yet) that it was a matter of choosing the titles that looked the most promising because I sure didn't have the money to get ALL of them (dammint!). This is where UPTOWN's bootleg editions came in handy. They helped me to know what to look for... (Didn't have the internet in the late 80s, early 90s).

Eventually there were CD bootlegs. My first was The White Album, a CD with most of the show from the Lovesexy Live video concert. Soon after, finally, the Black Album on CD. It was in a slim case with Prince "stuff" embossed on the case. The disc had PROMO stamped on it and boy did it look official (it wasn't), there were only 2 tracks, side 1 and side 2 of the LP, very Lovesexy like... hmmm...

I kept collecting the bootleg CDs right up until I had a CD burner in the late 90s. The last one I bought was Fantasia 3CD. Then I started trading copies of my collection with newbies buying the new ones. Now of course, with the internet, it's a whole new ballgame. Most those horrible sounding outtakes have been replaced with much better copies. Almost every show appears on a boot. And some of the fans with the pristine tapes have begun to leak them. What a journey!

[Edited 9/4/12 9:04am]

smokeverbs said:

Like most folks, and I touched on this in another thread, it was a cassette of the black album back in '89. Bought mine at Record Time from DJ Overdose. (It was nearly 25 years ago, so I think it's safe to talk about this - hey Detroiters, who else remembers the Dance room?)

[Edited 9/3/12 22:30pm]

Ah yes, good old Record Time and DJ Overdose. The Dance room was AMAZING. I remember going into that Record Time location before they moved further down Gratiot and they had a ton of copies of Madhouse "16" on CD, still in the longbox. Like a FOOL I only bought one for myself. If only I had bought the whole batch.

Was so sad this institution closed, the Detroit area record store scene is a shell of what it was growing up. Bought SO many Prince and related records and CD's there.

I would love to hear the Extended version of Around the World In A DAY!!! DANG IT!

My first bootleg actually was a cassette The Black Album but it had Good Love, Scarlett Pussy and the extended shockadelica with a weird sample in the middle.

MY SECOND was Crystal Ball it had a different version of Strange Relationship with slightly different verses and a sitar that was TOOOO loud lol.

a cassette of the Black Album This was in the summer of '88.I was so curious to hear this album! Interestingly,the person who made me this tape also added some other tracks that I had never heard before: "Rebirth Of The Flesh","Feel U Up",etc.

electricberet said:

Stymie said:

electricberet said: Luckily I had a close friend who was a prince fanatic. She had tons of prince boots and took me to a store on the north side of Chicago that sold all kinds of prince boots and videos. It was through her that I found out people were selling this type of stuff through the mail as well.

I lived in a small town in Colorado at the time and nobody sold any Prince bootlegs anywhere nearby. The local record store didn't even stock his 12" singles, so I had to special-order those. I'm not sure exactly where I found the Black Album cassette or the record (now that I think about it, I might have dubbed the cassette from the record myself), but I'm sure I got it in the mail through some kind of newsletter. It was around this time that I discovered Goldmine magazine, which is how I finally was able to buy the "Let's Work" 12" single, which was out of print already.

I did buy the CD in a record store in Denver when we went there on a family trip. I was shocked that they were selling it so openly.

I remember walking into a local record store in the early 90s and seeing a TON of Prince bootlegs for sale This was a small 'mom and pop' record store.They had vinyl copies of 'The Black Album',the 'Crucial' album,a multi-album 'Lovesexy Tour' recording,the 'Chocolate Box' album.....I was shocked! Needless to say,I walked out of that record store with a bag full or records and no more money in my wallet...lol...

TheDigitalGardener said:

Choccie Box, The Jewel boxes, some SOTT soundboard.. Laments?

For the most part, they sounded like shit. Thank fuck for progress.

yeah,the sound quality on some of those early boots were atrocious Also,it was hilarious the way some of the songs were mis-titled.On one of my boots,the song "Data Bank" is referred to as "Pretty Face"

The first bootleg I heard was The Black Album. I did not purchase the boot of The Black Album but received it as a free cassette like most people. The first bootleg I purchased was Night Clubbing.

Small Club (Insect records). I couldn't afford to buy an original Black Album back then because of the high prices.