Yes...it's cool to have bootlegs on your self and cool to listen to them. Prince is one of the most widely bootlegged artist's and no wonder why.

With the vast amount of unreleased material floating about it's really no wonder that bootlegs surfaced with alarming frequency. But in once sense Prince is right...it is very much tolerated.

If Prince wanted to find folks and shut them down he could, he actually knows more about bootlegs and who is involved then one might expect.

Even certain staff working for the NPGMC were, back in the day, involved in bootlegging. They were active and were known to people in Europe, the Prince community is smaller then one might think.

I think Prince should stop trippin' and put out his own bootlegs for a change...hey Prince, if you need any help with that i'd gladly offer my services

Seriously though, he seems to piss fans off more and more these days, for silly reasons...hell, our bootlegs is the last line of funk we get these days. We sure can't expect Prince to "free the music" or give us the funk.

An 80 minute DVD , now what possible excuse could one serve up to justity this?...my theory is that Prince is sooo obsessed with bootlegs he edits recordings to prevent them being bootlegged.

Not that it will prevent it, as i know folks are already working on a DVD rip if the audio to make a bootleg.
Which is the reason why he edits things...at least the bootleggers won't have the satisfaction of having the full concert on boot.

Whatever hurt your fans why don't you...be an ass all your life.

But i'll still be around if you wanna release some cool music Prince, just don't be editing

if it wasn't for bootlegs, i wouldn't give prince much attention or money... in other words, I wouldn't have bought the legit stuff or joined the club... so as far as my market dollar (and the friends that I have turned on to prince) is concerned, bootlegs worked to his advantage.

I know a supplier 2 the bootleggers. His name was "Big Chick" Huntsberry. Does that ring a bell?

Go Bootlegers...go Bootlegers.

I hate the fact that I know my money's going to the wrong place, but when you walk into a wreka stow and see a recording you don't have, the temptation is just too much! So I justify buying by saying to myself "If Prince released this, I would buy it from him, so it's fault..."

err... bootlegs are bad...but...let's just say Prince's unreleased music is great!!! I love it!!! I love the work 20 disc set. (my favorite adition to my bottom Prince shelf (I put offical stuff on the top one))

I also love...
Wonder boy
Camille (dream sound edition w. perfect almost quality Rebirth of the flesh, better than The Works version)
Trojan horse (AKA Small club)
ONA at tha apollo
High (I don't know where it came from but it contains all perfect quality full lenth versions and I love it)

I'd buy more boots now just to spite Prince but I pretty much have every song available.

The boots are what kept me going with Prince.. Fantasia just tickled my pickle when it was first released.. and from then on i've collected all the great sounding stuff, I have a nice collection I look at a time or two..


and I agree with the edit thing.. I dig 1999 cause (Even thought it WAS edited) the edits werent bad, most songs lasted like 7 or longer minutes.. and they were brilliant..

oh well, its like talking about two different people..
[This message was edited Sun Jul 27 1:07:44 PDT 2003 by Sdldawn]

I think Prince should not be concerned with bootlegging. He SHOULD be concerned with STOPPING the SALES of them.

Make them more easily accessible so
fans wont pay to acquire them, making them less of a commodity to the unscrupulous.

i never paid 4 a bootleg, and i never sold a bootleg. I just have beenb hearing them through other fams, and other famn been hearing them thru me. It is a shared community. Cant find no bootleg P's 2 buy, even in Mpls...

chant wit me ya'll "libzie...libzie..libzie...libzie"...

I have spent a fortune(literally) on Prince bootlegs for the past 5 years...

This very fact says more about Prince's attitude to his own recordings, than it does about my foolishness or the morals of the bootleggers

Prince's greatest bootleg? The Black Album
Our favourite bootlegs? The list is endless...

Nuff said

toejam said:

Nice avatar, send it to Prince, it's one of those 'Unofficial' WB CD singles he's after!

P.S. i have 73 bootleg Prince albums.

The bootlegs are so good, I hardly ever listen to a legit cd anymore.

I also think bootlegs are cool


The way I see it...Prince reportedly has hundreds of unreleased recordings.There is NO way he would be able to release all this stuff in his lifetime.So,bootlegs give his fans a chance to hear all these great songs,which is something he should be happy about (remember his mid-90s announcement that he wants to "flood the market"?).


As for him losing money,that is a bogus argument.Any person who would take the time,effort and spend large sums of money seeking and buying bootlegs is a diehard fan who would buy the official releases too.

bootlegs are bad