Liner notes to bootlegs and disowned recordings

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We're all familiar with misattribution of track titles, misspelled track titles, sometimes misspelled band names, the bad Photoshopping, and other cliché gaffes one can see on a bootleg or official release of a since disowned recording (i.e. Can's Out Of Reach) on a suspicious label that make them stand out as "not quite right" compared to official releases from said band...

..but some of these boots or odd releases contain liner notes, often going overboard in defending why this release is important and why YOU should have it. For comedic value, I have to give this a classic, whether it's lighter humor in the self-aggrandization, cynicism of the concerned nature of the notes for the artist (despite the author being part of a deal that's likely exploiting the artist to get cash), or a combination of both.

I posted the liner notes to that Syd Barrett "Out of Sight, out of mind" 2-CD boot on the RIP thread.. and also excerpts of the liner notes to one of the CD reissues of Can's Out Of Reach.

This isn't to say that even official liner notes can't be unintentionally bad or funny either, but there's a certain art to making liner notes to bootlegs or disowned albums that is just amazing to behold, for some reason...

It's a tough job trying to hype what's, for all intensive purposes, a trainwreck of a product compared to the official counterparts (for most bands anyway), and the people who have to complete this job have probably never written about music before, making it twice as tough, and hence the result is either extremely lazy, pretentious, nonsensical, all of the above, or just WTF.

Please post your favorite examples here.

(I don't want this to become a "Bootlegs are bad, mmkay?" type of thread, since that's been done before here; and I think we all realize the guilt/pleasure in indulging in bootlegs that are clearly trying to make dough off a band's presence... )

― San Diva Gyna (and a Masala DOsaNUT on the side) (donut), Saturday, 15 July 2006 21:53 (nineteen years ago)

There's some that Minutemen one that was released while the group was still going -- Jonathan L. Presents The Incredible Minutemen Live But . . . just a Minute Men, You Forgot To Tell Them It Was exclusively Recorded By and For The Virgin Vinyl Show - 96 Rock, KLPX, Tucson (LP), sez Wikipedia. I seem to remember the liner notes being fairly combative towards the group. ;-)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Saturday, 15 July 2006 22:10 (nineteen years ago)

haha

― corey c (shock of daylight), Sunday, 16 July 2006 07:42 (nineteen years ago)

I don't have it handy this morning, but I seem to recall some really brilliant liner notes on Elvis' Greatest Shit. The reference to another album 'Dead Onstage in Vegas' was pretty funny. Drugs are bad, mmmkay?

― vacasmagras (vacasmagras), Sunday, 16 July 2006 13:52 (nineteen years ago)

There's a quasi-bootleg of some radio sessions of Lou Reed's right before (I think) 'Transformer' called 'American Poet,' and they are the worst I've ever encountered--anyone seen this one?

― I.M. (I.M.), Sunday, 16 July 2006 14:38 (nineteen years ago)

if I can just be a total asshole pedant here:

for all intensive purposes

this is actually "to all intents & purposes," though the malapropism is so widely used that it'll probably be correct in another fifty years

― Thomas Tallis (Tommy), Sunday, 16 July 2006 15:06 (nineteen years ago)

the liner notes to my CD of nirvana's last ever show are translated from italian, an awkwardly phrased but impassioned plea to the press to get off kurt's back, that the rome overdose was an accident, and that kurt will recover to rock harder another day. which is quite poignantly off the mark.

― i am not a nugget (stevie), Sunday, 16 July 2006 20:27 (nineteen years ago)

this is actually "to all intents & purposes," though the malapropism is so widely used that it'll probably be correct in another fifty years

See, I thought it was just the current version of "for all intense porpoises"

― San Diva Gyna (and a Masala DOsaNUT on the side) (donut), Sunday, 16 July 2006 21:47 (nineteen years ago)

I remember almost buying a fantastic looking VU bootleg called "More Bermuda than Pizza", great photos, unreleased and hard to find, even mythical tracks, good quality pressing. But it was just too much cash. Later I bought a cassette copy. Whew. All tracks were incorrectly labelled and/or rubbish. (The 'unreleased' full length version of "Loop" was Metal Machine Music played at 16 rpm. The 'early' demo of "Sister Ray" was Lou droning on with a modernish guitar synth. And so on)

― mark grout (mark grout), Monday, 17 July 2006 06:43 (nineteen years ago)

I remember a live Rage Against The Machine bootleg which contained the legend "RATM will choke you to death". I assume the author meant sonically.

― Ruairi Wirewool (Ruairi Wirewool), Monday, 17 July 2006 10:31 (nineteen years ago)

if I can just be a total asshole pedant here

Then allow me to be an even BIGGER asshole pedant and complain about seeing the word "jive" the other day, in some random thread, within a sentence which clearly called for the word "JIBE"!

― M. Agony Von Bontee (M. Agony Von Bontee), Monday, 17 July 2006 13:59 (nineteen years ago)

Yes, those "American Poet" liners are insanely bad. They must've been written in a language other than English and then filtered through a translation program. Either that, or the dude wrote them while half asleep. The music on that CD is quite nice, though...
I have a Basement Tapes bootleg that has pretty decent, well-informed liner notes.

― Tyler W (tylerw), Monday, 17 July 2006 20:34 (nineteen years ago)

I have a Patti Smith boot with humourous notes, all I remember from it is a bit that states that she "kept a number of homosexuals as pets."

Also a Pere Ubu one called Don't Expect Art that mistitles all the songs, but in a kind of clever way ("I Will Wait" becomes "WW I," for example.)

― nickn (nickn), Monday, 17 July 2006 21:17 (nineteen years ago)

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Liner notes to bootlegs and disowned recordings - C/D?