In the beginning, there was a brave soul who stuffed a tape recorder down his trousers and made dodgy yet historic bootleg recordings at concerts by bands such as the Virgin Prunes and Teardrop Explodes, complete with coughs and comments from anyone who happened to stand between him and the speakers.
As a former participant in this illicit practice, I still recall the satisfaction obtained in reliving the experience later that night, your snapshot of music history captured in spontaneous style. And if you wanted to forgo the attendant hassle and just enjoy the gig, then you left the tape recorder at home, safe in the knowledge that the next day a modest, buff-wrapped bootleg of the gig would be available on the streets of Dublin for under a fiver.
Recently, US rock band Pearl Jam turned the classic notion of the bootleg on its head, releasing 25 live double CDs, each one recorded at the mixing desk during their recent European tour. Last month, a further 46 such CDs were released, covering each night of their US tour. The double CDs, which retail at just $11 each if bought through the band's fan club, cost roughly one-third of the price of existing Pearl Jam bootleg CDs in shops.
"A lot of people out there buy bootlegs, and it's risky because you can spend a lot of money and get a very poor-quality recording," said Pearl Jam's lead singer, Eddie Vedder, explaining the initiative.
The move has met with total support from fans and near total derision from music critics, who have branded Pearl Jam "control freaks" who are attempting to take over one of the few remaining spaces where fans can create their own piece of the action.
"That's old-school nonsense," counters Chris Golding, who works in Freebird Records in Dublin. "I've recorded dozens of bootlegs with dodgy sound quality and I'd swap them any day for a quality bootleg from the mixing desk."
US psychedelic hippies The Grateful Dead were the first band to openly facilitate bootleggers at their gigs, reserving a seating section at each show for fans in possession of "Taper Tickets". By definition, the Pearl Jam releases do not fall into the category of bootlegs, as that term denotes an illegal recording produced beyond the control of the artist or record company. Bu there have been "official bootlegs" over the past three decades. Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes led the way, and while other bands have leaked bootlegs to bypass reluctant record companies refusing to release some of their material.
On the Pearl Jam tapes, Pearl Jam vocalist Vedder can be heard between songs, reminding fans in the mosh pit area at the front of the stage to watch out for each other and stay safe. These words of caution take on great significance in the light of what happened during concert 26, which is absent from the live releases, when nine fans were crushed to death in Denmark.
The Pearl Jam web pages are packed with recommendations over which shows are the best value, with most plumping for a three-hour set in Poland.
No two nights are the same, and at times the crowd comes close to outperforming the band, with Vedder stopping midsong to listen as the audience delivers the lyrics he has forgotten. The unofficial Vedder teleprompter is present even in Slovenia and Italy, where most of the audience does not speak English.
The pirate bootleg industry took a huge leap out of some punter's sweaty armpit and into the mixing desk through Italian company KTS in the 1980s, as high-quality recordings became available in glossy catalogues. The company collapsed several years ago, in the face of legal proceedings taken against their bootleg empire.
In Ireland, copyright and royalty representatives have tracked down bootleggers with zeal, dispatching a plain-clothes employee to pound the streets of Dublin each weekend in search of transgressors.
"We haven't found anything in weeks," says Murtagh, head of anti-piracy at the Irish Recording Music Association, (IRMA). Murtagh's office, although disapproving of the lone fan who smuggles a mini-disc recorder into a gig, is really after the organised bootleg traders who cost record companies and artists in Ireland more than £3 million in lost revenues each year.
Murtagh's office prosecuted street bootleggers on the basis of the Casual Trading Act rather than copyright infringement, because of a lack of effective legislation. In order for record shops to be challenged over bootleg sales, a complaint would have to be filed by an affected songwriter or group.
All that changed as the Copyright and Related Act 2000 (CRA), passed into Irish law last June, came into operation before Christmas.
Under the CRA 2000 provisions, commercial bootleggers face fines of up to £100,000 and/or five years in prison, a serious incentive to give up the trade, or so one would have imagined. "You must be joking," responded one well-known bootleg seller in Dublin, when told of the new penalties for involvement in the trade, "you'd think we were trafficking drugs".
In Ireland, the bootleg scene is co-ordinated through a handful of record shops which, for obvious reasons, prefer to remain anonymous. The efficiency of the Irish traders in obtaining bootlegs is beyond question, as evidenced by the likes of Waterboys' singer Mike Scott, who turned up in one shop to complete his own back catalogue.
"We've survived because we're not cheeky," said one bootleg seller. "This is a cottage industry which has no impact on record sales." One of the hottest bootlegs recently in Dublin was Bob Dylan's Vicar Street gig, probably recorded on a professional mini-disc player.
The unique advantage of the Pearl Jam discs is that fans can choose exactly which night of the tour to buy. The Point Depot gig in Dublin last June is enjoying a brisk trade in Tower Records, Dublin, while the Milan concert did well in the Italian charts, suggesting that the biggest market for any one concert will be the fans who saw the band play that particular show.
Like the "Deadheads" before them, Pearl Jam fans enjoy unique access to their favourite band, who facilitate "hometapers" at their concerts, allowing them to bring in their own equipment.
However, the band's official website also cautions against obsessive attempts to capture every twiddle and thump of their guitar heroes: "A live concert is to be experienced live, it isn't a recording session, it's a two-way conversation between musician and audience".
Pearl Jam's official website: www.tenclub.net