Other Entertainment Pens by Doreen Summerfelt 86th Street Music Hall Thurs. Sept. 15, 1988 The Wailers with guests Roots Round Up The first words that come to mind are "wow" and "loud". If you were one of the lucky people that saw the "Wailers" in concert last Thursday you probably had the same reaction. The night opened with a new and upcoming Vancouver Reggae band. This group was a cross between rock, | country and reggae. In my opinion this group | is going somewhere. The main event was as everyone expected it to be, outstanding. I think it is just fantastic that the group still has the same energy it had when Bob Marley was still around. If you can imagine crowds and | crowds of all ages gathered around the stage, dancing in the isles and just having a great | time then you have just imagined the concert. The Wailers did a song for Nelson - Mandel a and most of their old favorites. In my opinion this concert was a ten plus | and was well worth seeing. By Richard Stewart Did you miss U2 when they were in Van- couver? Are you afraid that Bruce Spring- steen won’t hit town on his next tour? Does your favorite rock group not tour much? Have no fear. Although it’s not the same as being at the concert, chances are that you can find a live recording of your favorite music. Bootlegging, the making and selling of il- licit recordings of live concerts or studio tracks, has been around since the late 1960’s when someone made a record out of some Bob Dylan and the Band jams and called it Great White Wonder. By the time Bruce Springsteen rolled onto the scene in 1975, the bootlegging in- dustry was going full force. In the early 1980’s, when the portable recording tape deck came on the market, the bootlegging industry opened up to anyone who could get his hands on one of these rela- tively inexpensive gadgets. Today, the biggest targets of the bootleg- gers are Bruce Springsteen and U2. Follow- ing close behind are New Order, Siouxie and the Banshees, The Smiths and David Bowie. There even exist tapes of Pink Floyd, John Cougar Mellencamp, The Who, Neil Young, and many others. Heavy Metal groups get a lot of attention too. When talking about the illicit recording industry there are some distinctions to make. Specifially, a bootleg is a live recording ac- tually made into a commercially available record or tape. Only a small percentage of il- licit recordings get made into bootlegs. Besides records and tapes, the industry is even moving into the compact disc market. By Lauriie Long & Jeff McKeil Arriving at the Commodoer at 10:30 for a Frday nght show is standard. At least I thought so. Unfortunatly, this not the case when there are three bands on the bill. So we missed the first band, Cry on Cue. And the second had already launched into their set. Oliver deCoque and his 15 piece Nigeriian Orchetra had the crowd well in hand when we strolled in. You could feel the collective energy of the near full house as we found our way through the gyrating, swaying, swinging crowd. Usiing guitars; many percussion instruments of various shapes, sound and sizes; and a rich, harmonic vocal style they offered fabulous rythmic and traditional songs that no one could resist. By the time the Bhundu Boys hit the stage seen with their western styled Zimbabwean beat the crowd was really ready. While they are known for their comical antics on stage, they delivered a great set of melodic tunes with a high energy African rythm and no funny stuff. The only way to top these two bands would be to combine them, and combine they did for the highlight of the night. They did an encore with so much energy it could "Rock the Botha"! Note: "Rock the Botha" by Roots Roundup An original local reggae band with a newly released self produced album cleverly titled "Roots Rounddup” available at Highlige Records, Zulu and Blackswan outlets in Vancouver. CD The Portable Walkman: a bootlegger’s best friend. According to a Bruce Springsteen fan club magazine, a Springsteen bootleg CD is in the works. Its price will surely be prohibative, with a price under $100 unlikely, according to the magazine. Most bootlegged records are in the $30 to $50 dollar range, with most being double album recordings of concerts. Occasionally one can find triple albums or up to five album sets which go for $45 to $90. A single record goes for $20 to $30. The bootlegged tapes are most-accessible because they are usually prices between $10 and $20, which is competitive with the prices charged for legal records. The high prices for bootlegs are due to small production runs and the illegality of it. You will never find bootlegs in major record stores. Only independent record stores even consider carrying them. One local independent record store owner has said that he will begin supplying bootlegs soon because the demand is high and his competitors will take his business away if he doesn’t meet consumer demand. By far the biggest market for illegal recordings is the traders’ market. Record collectors’ magazines usually have a clas- sified section with ads asking for "rare/live", a euphemism for bootleg tapes. Recording the concerts themselves can be either easy or hard, depending on the artist involved. Some groups have tight security where they search you at the gate. On the Page 5_ 7 The Other Press Monday, September 18,1988 Smarties, the conspiracy By Wayne Pinette Do you remember, in your youth, buying the popular candy "Smarties"? What do you think made them popular? Was it the fact that you could "suck them very slowly, or crunch them very fast"? Or maybe it was the fun you had blowing into the empty box and making those annoying squeaking sounds. If you enjoyed the latter, you’d better sit down. Rowntree, the maker of Smarties, has changed the box and, consequently, it is no 5, + y.. BS at SRASC SJ Oo en ORISSA APSO longer the instrument it used to be. All of the hours of free, non-taxable fun you had as a kid cannot be had by the younger generation. What is this world coming to? Is it any wonder that 12-year-old children are robbing liquor stores? Their lives are deprived. This can only be the beginning. Today it’s the box; tomorrow, they will print instructions to eat the red ones first. After that? It is to scary to consider. What can we do about it? We can band together and fight this. We can not allow ourselves to be blinded by unimportant things, like new colors (namely blue). We can write our MLA and ask that a stop be put to this catastrophe. Rowntree may be winning the battle, but the war isn’t over. The basics of bootlegging explained other hand, some groups, like the Grateful Dead, set aside an area in the stadium where the sound is best for the bootleggers to do their recording. Most groups are somewhere in between these two extremes. Most bootlegged recordings are audience tapes, where the bootlegger actually sits in the audience and records the concert. Some are soundboard tapes, where the bootlegger gets either a tape from a roadie on the staff or tapes a concert broadcast on the radio. The soundboard tapes produce the best quality by far. Despite their availablity, bootlegs are, plain and simple, illegal. Bootleggers are using material not meant for general consumption. The artists have not given permission for the records to be made and receive no money from the sale of the recordings. The quality of the recordings is often bad to unrecognizable and does nothing to en- hance the artist’s image. The bootleggers have a set of counter-ar- guments, the biggest of which is that the ar- tists don’t need more money because, in- variably, they are rolling in dough anyway. In response to the claim that bootlegs do not enhance the image of the artist, bootleggers say that people who buy bootlegs are com- mitted fans who will buy regardless of the quality of the recording. When an independent record store owner in Vancouver was asked whether he worries about getting caught for selling bootlegs, he answered, "They (the police) don’t worry about you (the buyer) and they don’t care about me (the seller), they care about the guy who got this record to me."