I understand this phenomenon, although I don't really indulge in it beyond a few Coltrane boots. The Dead are probably the best example: their idiom was a sorta improv-rock hybrid with spotty results. I don't care for the Grateful Dead myself, but when they were on, they were really on, and of course for a dedicated fan, the "really on" moments are not so few and far between. Most of your list is performers known for improvising, generally in some sort of extended context, and the boot lover is after those really hot moments. I work with a guy who is a fanatical Who fan, to an almost pathological degree, and he has thousands of Who bootlegs, concert films, etc, spends all of his free time getting more such things, and so on. (Needless to say, he's heartbroken at the moment). It seems weird to me that he has no interest in even the Who's contemporaries - it's all Who, all the time. At 06:01 PM 6/28/2002 -0500, Zachary Steiner wrote:
So I can't really tell whether this same phenomenon works for them, making 250 seemingly the same bootlegs 'worth' getting (as with Monk, Dylan, Grateful Dead, Hendrix, Coltrane, Dolphy, Zappa or Phish).
I never did understand this phenomenon. I can see the relevance for a scholar to compare the nuisances of any of these said musicians, but for most listeners (including many musicians and more than "casual" listeners in the bunch) the bootlegs are pretty much the same. Hearing different covers is one thing, but 100s of versions of the same tune!?! It could be something that I will never understand.
Zach
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Chris Selvig