Boots... Jimi Hendrix... Karl J. Geisler...

... In 1989 HOTWACKS wrote : Record industry spokesmen often include BOOTLEGS with COUNTERFEIT and PIRATE recordings when making statements about the loss of revenues from record piracy. BOOTLEGS, with their small pressings should NOT be included in this figure as the record labels do NOT lose revenue from a recording which is NOT in their catalog

BOOTLEG: A Bootleg release consists of unreleased material recorded at concerts, studio outtakes, radio and/or TV broadcasts and a variety of other sources. It should be noted that Bootlegs do NOT affect the commercial recording environment, as often mis-thought; as the material released on Bootlegs are unreleased items and/or from concerts, typically recorded by amateurs.

PIRATE: A Pirate release consists of released material in a format that was not original intended by the producer. A Pirate release will also not try to look or act as an original commerical release

COUNTERFEIT: A Counterfeit release is a complete rip-off of an officially released commercial item. It will look like the original release (often with mistakes - sometimes intentional mistakes). A Counterfeit release is designed by the rip-off crew to replace and sell like an official release

The point I'd like to make here is that real fans--those who buy bootlegs--most likely already have everything that's commercially available. If record companies would release this kind of stuff, I'd buy it from them. All they'd have to do is print a limited number, with simple packaging, and they'd make even more money than they already do. They could also make available the many sought-after recordings that are now long out of print--hell, even that would be a big bonus.

What I'd like to see is a stop put to the constant repackaging of stuff like the Scene Club jam and the "Early" Jimi recordings, which are released legally. The worst crap out there IS released LEGALLY.