Category: Uncategorized

Fifteen Years of Bootlegs

Though I started this blog in 2004 it wasn’t until 2008 that I started posting bootlegs for download. That’s approximately fifteen years (more or less, there have been some stops and starts along the way) of me posting shows on this blog. I don’t have any real idea of how many shows I’ve posted in all those years. I’ve got 6,960 of them that I’ve labeled “Bootleg Bonanza” which is what I used to call those posts. But that doesn’t include any of the shows that are still locked away in private mode, nor any of the more recent shows that I’ve thrown up on Google Drive. That’s a lot of sharing. I’m proud of that.

Five years ago I did a series of posts where I celebrated Ten Years of Bootlegs. I did a little countdown of my Top Ten most popular bootleg posts, according to my hit counter. I thought it would be fun to revisit that post with an update for the 15 Year Anniversary.

As always there are caveats. My hit counter is wrong. Over the years I have switched a time or two between WordPress and Blogger. I’ve had my own website, I’ve downloaded counters, and relied on whatever WordPress uses internally. I went private for a few years, blocking all search engine access. I urged everyone to sign up for my e-mails (which means most people never actually come to the site, they just download from the e-mail.) And now that I’m doing daily posts where I mostly link directly to Google instead of doing individual posts for each show. All of that has massively messed with my stats.

But with all of that in mind, I still think it is fun to see what is most popular.

Here’s the original list, with original stats.

10. Bob Dylan – Abandoned Desire – 2251 hits
09. Bob Dylan – 1978 Tour Collection – 2125 hits
08. Bob Dylan – The Genuine Never Ending Tour Covers Collection (1988-2006) – 2345 hits
07. Bob Dylan & The Grateful Dead – The Entire Tour – 3015 hits
06. Bob Dylan – The Complete Supper Club Soundboards – 3302 hits
05. Bob Dylan & Mark Knopfler – The Complete Recording Session – 3254 hits
04. Bob Dylan – Santa Cruz, CA (03/15-16/00) – 2874 hits
03. Bob Dylan – A Couple More Years – 3646 hits
02. The Allman Brothers Band – San Francisco, CA (12/31/73) – 3552 hits
01. Bob Dylan – The 1974 Soundboard Collection – 4367 hits

And here’s the updated list.

10. Bob Dylan & The Grateful Dead – San Rafael, CA (06/01/87) – 3802 hits
09. Bob Dylan – 1978 Tour Compilation – 3891 hits
08. The Grateful Dead – The Entire Warfield Theatre 1980 Run – 3963 hits
Van Morrison – Shows by Year – 4251
07. Bob Dylan – Santa Cruz, CA (03/15-16/00) – 4459 hits
06. Bob Dylan – The Genuine Never Ending Tour Covers Collection (1988-2000) – 4641 hits
05. The Allman Brothers – San Francisco, CA (12/31/73) 4880 hits
Grateful Dead: Shows by Year – 5103
04. Bob Dylan & Mark Knopfler – The Complete Recording Sessions 1979-1986 – 5191 hits
03. Bob Dylan – Complete Supper Club Soundboards – 5323 hits
02. Bob Dylan – 1974 Soundboard Collection – 6487 hits
01. Bob Dylan & The Grateful Dead – The Entire Tour – 8139 hits

So as you can see it mostly stayed the same, which makes sense, I guess. What was popular then stayed popular now. The positioning has changed a bit which is interesting.

The Dead’s Warfield run of 1980 joined the list. It wasn’t posted until the middle of these anniversary posts which explains why it wasn’t on the original list. And a single Dylan and the Dead show also entered the list. I’m not sure why that particular one is popular. Pushed out were two Dylan outtake sessions – Abandoned Desire and A Couple More Years.

And there you have it. I don’t know if anyone but me cares about this stuff but I think it is pretty interesting. It does sadden me a little to realize that the way I post shows now pretty much eliminates my ability to know which shows are the most popular. Maybe someday I’ll go back to posting individual posts for individual shows, but that day isn’t today.

Footloose (1984)

footloose poster

I grew up in a small, conservative town in Oklahoma. My family attended a conservative, evangelical-ish church. My parents were conservative and religious, though I’ve since come to realize they weren’t quite as conservative as many folks in their social circles were at the time. I was allowed to listen to rock and roll music, and we watched all kinds of movies, sometimes even Rated-R movies.

My memory is fuzzy but I believe they did not allow my brother, who is four years older than me, to go to school dances. Dancing leads to sexy thoughts which leads to actual sex, or so the thought went. By the time I got old enough they had loosened up on that idea, but I actually had no desire to go to dances. I was way too shy to ask a girl to one, and even if I did, I didn’t know how to dance.

Footloose is a movie about a teenaged boy named Ren (Kevin Bacon) who moves from the big city of Chicago to a small, mountainside, Midwestern town. It is more or less run by the local Preacher (John Lithgow) who instigated a town ban on dancing of any kind. Now, in this scenario dancing doesn’t lead so much to sexing (though certainly, that is still on the reverend’s mind) but to drinking and that leads to death. Or at least it lead to his son’s death when he did some drinking and driving.

So Ren comes to town, and he’s the new kid so he gets picked on by the bullies, one of whom challenges him to a game of chicken on tractors. There’s a little trouble at school, too, which turns Ren into a troublemaker in the eyes of the preacher. But he also makes a friend with Willard (Chris Penn) and the preacher’s daughter Ariel (Lori Singer).

Did I mention the town has banned rock and roll, too? Like all bans of this sort, they don’t do any good and the teens listen to rock and roll, drink beer, smoke cigarettes, and have a little sex. But what they don’t do is dance. At least not in an organized fashion. Queue Ren and his righteous fight to have a school dance.

Though it was a big hit when it came out in 1984 I only just saw it this weekend. I did have the soundtrack though, and it’s killer. I don’t think my parents outright banned me from watching it, but I do remember hearing discussions about how us kids shouldn’t watch it because it promoted dancing and disrespecting authority. Someone also complained that the theme song by Kenny Loggins promoted skipping church to go dancing and having fun.

Had I been interested in seeing the film, I no doubt would have found a way, but it just didn’t look that good to me. Watching it now I can firmly say it is a very dumb film, but also ridiculously fun.

They don’t hammer too hard on the morality of the film, and Lithgow plays the preacher with some nuance and, eventually, some heart. Mostly it is a film that wants to be a musical and loves to do dance montages.

Two of my favorites include Ren getting frustrated by the preacher and running off to some warehouse where he proceeds to drink, smoke and do an amazing dance all by himself. Later, when he learns Willard can’t dance he teaches him. And we are treated to this lovely montage of those two teenage boys dancing together (one might think this film is very gay – one might not be wrong).

I don’t think it is too much of a spoiler to say that the teens get their dance. What I love about the final dance scene is that it isn’t some carousing, dirty dancing affair. No, the teens do a little line-type dance and then mostly just dance by themselves. It is very chaste, just some kids having fun.

And that’s the film. Really pretty dumb, but tons of fun to watch.

Boom Town (1940)

boom town movie

While looking for something to watch I stumbled upon this movie. A western starring Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Claudette Colbert, and Hedy Lamarr, I thought, why have I never heard of this before? The answer, of course, is that it isn’t that good. Great movies become beloved, and bad ones are notorious, but average ones are easily forgotten.

Gable and Tracy play Big John McMasters and Square John Sand respectively, two oil wildcatters. The film starts out strong enough with both of them down on their luck, out of work, and out of money. Square John has spent his last dime on some Oklahoma land he’s just sure is full of oil, but he’s got no cash to buy the drilling equipment. Big John says he has cash and they team up together. Turns out he doesn’t really have any money but he cons the equipment from Luther Aldrich (Frank Morgan). Oil flows and the two of them are rich.

Square John has a girl, Betsy (Claudette Colbert) back home he’s been courting since he was a young buck, but he’s yet to talk her into marriage. She shows up without warning and meets Big John without either knowing who the other is. She pretty quickly figures out he’s Square John’s partner, but she finds it fun to toy with him without him knowing who she is. They talk and flirt, and fall in love. In the morning she fesses up, but admits she never really loved Square John, at least not in that way, and came all the way out to let him down gently.

Square John, for his part, takes all of this on the chin. Betsy and Big John get married and things go well. Until they don’t. She finds him in the arms of another woman, starts to leave him, but ultimately forgives him. Something Square John cannot do.

He breaks up their partnership and the rest of the film finds one of them up and the other one down, financially speaking. When one is down he wants nothing to do with the other, and vice versa.

It is here that the film falls apart for me. It goes on for far too long having one of them strike it rich and then lose everything and then the tides turn. Betsy is stuck in the middle. Hedy Lamarr eventually shows up as a woman who uses her skills and charms to basically be a corporate spy, giving Big John the scoop on what is going down in New York, and giving him the upper hand. She uses those same charms to woo him, creating yet another rift in the relationship.

I love me some Hedy Lamarr but by the time she really gets going, I was ready for the film to end. It has some really oddball things to say about love and marriage and the story just falls apart about midway through.

That’s too bad, too, because it has a great cast and that first half has a lot of promise.

The filmmaking is actually pretty great. The actors are all very good and the photography is very picturesque. There is one brilliant scene in which an oil well catches fire. The blaze is tremendous and a score of workers risk their lives to put it out It really is quite something to see.

The Shout (1978)

the shout movie poster

I had planned to make this film last week’s Friday Night Horror movie, but about halfway through I stopped it to do some family things, and when I tried to pick it back up, my Internet was acting wonky and I couldn’t get it to play (it is currently on the Criterion Channel). But since it has been on my mind, I figure I’ll talk about it now.

A cricket game is being played at a mental institution. Patients and employees play alike, and a few outsiders are brought in as well. One such outsider, Robert (Tim Curry) takes score inside a covered wagon. A strange man (Alan Bates) joins him. This man begins to tell a story and the film follows.

In a small, seaside village live Anthony and Rachel Fielding (John Hurt and Susanna York). He’s an experimental composer who also plays organ for the local church. After services, one Sunday a stranger, Crossley (Alan Bates) begins talking to Anthony. Crossley has some odd ideas about theology and Anthony pushes him away stating that he has to go home. Instead, he meets with his mistress for a tryst.

When he does arrive home he is met at the door by Crossley, who slyly mentions how long it took Anthony to get to his home. Crossley then invites himself for dinner. He says that he spent fifteen years living in the Australian outback with the Aboriginal people where he learned their magic. He professes to know a shout that will kill anyone within listening distance.

At first, the Fieldings are put off by him, but then he seems to hold power over them. Rachel is seduced by him and Anthony does whatever he says. The film is somewhat vague on whether or not he does have supernatural power. It seems to be real, but it could also be a hallucination.

The entire film could be a hallucination, come to think of it. We periodically cut back to that cricket game. Crossley is there telling the story, at least I think it is Crossley. It is someone played by Alan Bates but I don’t believe he ever gives his name. Anthony is there, too, playing cricket. But again, is that Anthony, a different character played by John Hurt?

Are these two characters at the cricket match patients? Has the storyteller been telling the truth, or is he just making up a story? Is the cricket player actually Anthony? Is he now a patient at the hospital? Or do we see that person as Anthony inside the story because the storyteller just happens to be watching him play cricket?

The film doesn’t let us know any of the answers. It is enigmatic and strange. British films in the 1960s-1970s were often enigmatic and strange. They often dealt with the supernatural and relied more on mood and eeriness and plot. So it is with The Shout. Don’t expect the film to tell you anything and you might find yourself enjoying it.

Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982)

dead men don't wear plaid poster

I first learned of Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid inside a little video rental store. The VHS had a cool cover with Steve Martin on the front aiming a gun at the audience, a plaid outline behind him. This would be the late-ish 1980s and Steve Martin was a huge star. I was a young teen and loved Martin in movies like Three Amigos (1986), Roxanne (1987), and The Man With Two Brains (1983). I immediately picked the VHS up and talked my mother into renting it.

We took it home and I popped it in the VCR and pressed play. I was immediately disappointed. It was in black and white. I hated black-and-white movies. Or I thought I did. I’d never actually seen one. But black and white movies were old and old was bad. At least that’s what I thought back then anyhow.

I watched for maybe ten minutes then turned it off in disgust.

Many years later, when I learned that there are, in fact, many really great movies in black and white, I decided to give it another spin. I was definitely a classic movie fan by then, but just a beginner. I knew actors like Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, and Vincent Price. I’d seen a few film noirs but was by no means an expert.

The film is a homage to the classic film noirs of the 1940s. Through trick editing, it intercuts the new story with clips from 19 classic films. It does this surprisingly well.

Steve Martin plays Rigby Reardon a private investigator who is hired by Juliett Forest (Rachel Ward) to investigate the murder of her father. During the investigation, he comes across a large crowd of interesting characters, which is where the classic films come in.

Sometimes Reardon will call someone on the telephone and it will be Humphrey Bogart from The Big Sleep (or some other classic film star in a classic movie) who will answer. The dialog is cut as if Reardon is talking to Phillip Marlowe. Other times he’ll meet up with someone and it will be Veronica Lake in The Glass Key (or some other classic film star in a classic movie). In these instances, the film will sometimes use an extra dressed like the classic film actor, shot from behind, so that they can interact with Reardon in a more realistic way. It is all done cleverly and that makes it a really fun watch.

The great Edith Head (in her last film) did the costumes and she did an amazing job matching everything up. Ditto the lighting and staging and everything.

The film was co-written (with Steve Martin) by Carl Reiner, and it was directed by him as well. Reiner is a vaudevillian at heart and this is very much in Martin’s very silly stage (long before he started writing for the New Yorker and Broadway). I have to admit I’m not a big fan of that style of comedy. It is too jokey for me.

It is also a bit cringe. There is an ongoing joke where Reardon feels Juliet Forest’s up, caressing her breasts because they were knocked out of place during a scuffle. Or another time Reardon gives Juliet a kiss when she has passed out. There are quite a few dumb gags like that that play very differently now.

I am now a very big fan of classic movies and film noir in particular. I’ve seen more than half the films included inside this movie and so all of that stuff was really quite delightful. It is very well done; clearly, the filmmakers are very big fans of classic movies.

Unsourced Dylan Shows

As I’m working my way through my unsorted shows I’m coming across a bunch of Dylan shows that have no source information. They are mostly from the early to mid-2000s and have labels like “cdr 706.”

I cannot for the life of me remember where these came from. I don’t know if I downloaded them from some random site or if someone sent them to me.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? Did you send them to me? If so do you have any source information for them? Are you ok with me posting them?

Sometimes when folks send me shows they will give me info on what they are sending me or they will request I not post them publicly for one reason or another. But I’m dumb and I tend to download things, then let them sit on the hard drive for ages. Then I forget where they came from. So before I do anything with these I wanted to see if I could figure out where they came from.

I did a search in my e-mail account but searching for things like “Bob Dylan” gets me the phone book. Anyway, if you did send these to me could you leave a comment or drop me an e-mail. Thanks.

Life in France, And Other Things

I started this blog on May 29, 2004. That’s almost 19 years ago. When I started it I had no idea what I was going to do with it. I certainly would have never guessed I’d still be blogging all these years later.

My wife and I moved to Strasbourg, France in September of 2004 and stayed until June of 2005. This blog was started as a way of journaling my experiences there. I knew I’d want to keep a record of our adventures and blogs were just really becoming a thing back then so it seemed like the perfect way to take notes. I wasn’t even sure if I’d make the blog public, or rather, if I would send anybody the links to what I was writing.

Eventually, I did, then I got to where I wanted more and more people to visit. At first, all I did was journal our time in France. In time I started writing reviews. Then it became a full-fledged pop culture site. Soon enough I was talking bout bootlegs, then sharing them, and then they overtook the site altogether. And here we are.

As most of you know a few years ago I started getting nasty letters from lawyers claiming violations of one thing or another. That got me scared and I turned the blog private. Actually, I made every single post on the site private and then I turned the entire site private. Eventually, I started inviting people to my private site, but even then most of the old posts were hidden from everybody but me.

For a long while the only posts I allowed anyone to see were bootleg related. Now the site is public again but those old private posts have remained hidden. I’ve slowly been making them visible again, but I’ve been very selective about it. That is about to change. I’m ready to start working my way through the site, from the oldest posts to the newest and making everything public.

I’m going to be slow about it. I want to read each post, make some light edits, and then make them public. Before I do that thought I want to explain France a little bit.

Back in 2004, my wife was a graduate student at Indiana University in Bloomington. She was studying French Linguistics. I was a working schlub. Her department had an exchange program with a university in Strasbourg. Basically, Indiana students would go to France and teach English and some French student would come to Indiana and teach French. She signed up and we lived in Strasbourg for roughly ten months.

It was an amazing time. It was a long time ago. I read some of those old posts and I hardly recognize myself. I spread a little caution here to note that as you read those posts, recognize some of them are almost two decades old. The man that I was is not the man that I am. I’ve changed. I’ve grown. My beliefs have changed and grown too. Also recognize that in the beginning, I was writing to a small audience. Mostly my family, my wife’s family, and a few close friends. I had no idea I’d eventually open this up to the world or that music nerds would be reading my thoughts many years later.

I grew up in the Church of Christ. That’s a very conservative, evangelical-esque Christian church. I was still very much a member when we lived in France (like I said I was a different man back then). Before we left we made contact with a Church of Christ missionary from Belgium who was working in Strasbourg. He and his amazing wife picked us up from the airport and allowed us to stay with them for a couple of weeks while we got ourselves sorted. We attended his church the entire time we lived in France.

I say church but really we gathered in his house and some of the other member’s apartments. The Church of Christ is not very big in France. France has an odd relationship with any church that isn’t Catholic. While we were there a group of college kids from America, who were part of a missionary in-training program called Adventures in Missions, also attended the little church. They were young, nice, and very naive. My wife and I became friends with them.

I mention all of this because as I’m making all of my journal entries from France you will hear me talk about church and those AIM students quite a lot. I don’t talk about politics or religion much on my blog anymore (intentionally so as I want the blog to be about music and movies and art – things that gather us together not divide) so I expect it may be a little jolting to hear me talk about it so often in those old posts.

Like I keep saying I was a different man back then, but that is who I was, for better and for worse. I’m making it sound like I’m writing sermons in those old blogs and that isn’t the case at all. Mostly it is my experiences in a foreign land. We also often hung out with my wife’s British coworkers and drank ourselves silly. You won’t read so much about that as, well my mother was reading and she would have had a fit.

My plan is to make several of these old posts public every day. Some days there will be more than others. So prepare yourself for random e-mails from my blog. Also please notice the dates these posts were originally published. It may be rather confusing to get an e-mail about me adventuring in Europe when in reality I am stuck here in dreary Oklahoma.

I do hope you enjoy ready about my life all those years ago. My apologies if you do not.

The Babysitter (2017)

the babysitter movie poster

Netflix has been recommending The Babysitter to me since it came out in 2017. The plot sounded fun, and I’ve almost pressed play a few times. But it stars Bella Thorne who is like the new Paris Hilton – famous for being famous, and attractive and exploiting that attractiveness into social media points (and money, presumably). I have zero interest in watching anything with her in it.

In the years since I’ve very much become a fan of Samara Weaving. She’s terrific in films like Mayhem and Ready or Not, she was the best part of the recent Scream film. So when I realized she was the actual star of The Babysitter I decided to give it a spin. The film is pretty good, actually, and Samara is terrific.

The plot is full of clever callbacks and the dialogue is often very funny. The story involves a shy, nerdy 12-year-old (Judah Lewis) who is sort of embarrassed to be the oldest kid on the block who still has a babysitter but less embarrassed that the babysitter looks like Samara Weaving and is super cool and actually seems interested in spending time with him. He’s then full-on mortified when he learns she’s the head of a satanic cult and needs his blood for a sacrificial ritual.

From there, it becomes a Home Alone-type situation with the boy trying to keep the babysitter and her friends from killing him. Well, Home Alone where the violence is a lot more visceral and less cartoony. It is mostly quite a fun thrill ride. Even Bella Thorne is enjoyable. She plays a vacuous, superficial, dumb-dumb who is more concerned with her beauty than anything else (when she gets shot in the chest she is more worried that it will ruin her boobs than whether she’ll live or die). You could argue it isn’t much of a stretch for the actress.

The problem lies in the direction. McG started life as a music producer and video director and it shows. So much of The Babysitter feels like it belongs on MTV. It is filled with fast cuts, big needle drops, and neon-bright directorial swings. He draws clear influence from folks like Quentin Tarantino and Edgar Wright but has none of their panache or understanding of how to use stylistic flourishes to support the story. Instead, it feels like he’s just beating us on the head with them.

Had the script been given maybe one or two more go-overs and it had been helmed by a real director The Babysitter could have been a true cult classic. As it is, I’m once again swooned by Samara Weaving, and entertained by the story, but I leave it wishing there was more to it.

New Pickups

pictures of dvds and book

We spent most of last week just sitting around with family celebrating the life and mourning the death of my brother-in-law Paul. It was a long, difficult week. But we did have a little fun as well. The funeral was on Thursday so on Friday we went bowling and then played Dominoes.

At some point, my wife and I went to McKays, a wonderful little used book/music/movie store and I bought a few things. Honestly, I was pretty much dazed at that point so I didn’t really know what I was looking for so I just grabbed a few things that looked fun.

I am a big fan of boxed sets where you get several movies from an actor, or director, or maybe that cover a theme. These usually don’t include the big named films but will give you some lesser-known films for a cheap price.

The Tough Guys set has three films each from Kirk Douglas, James Cagney, and John Wayne. I’ve not heard of most of them (except The Strange Love of Martha Ivers which I think I already own and is excellent) but I’m looking forward to watching some lesser movies from three actors I really enjoy.

I love me some Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracey. The disks in this collection come in those cheap snap cases, but I’m hoping the movies are good.

For reasons that are beyond me (besides racism) the 1930s found a lot of white actors playing Asian detectives. A number of actors (most famously Warner Oakland) played Charlie Chan in a series of films, Boris Karloff played Mr. Wong and Peter Lorre starred as Mr. Motto.

I’ve seen several of the Chan and Wong films and quite liked them so I’m interested to see what Lorre does as Motto. It is pretty gross watching these very non-Asian actors play Asian characters (often stereotypically so) but I have definitely learned to overlook any number of varying degrees of offensiveness in older films. You really can’t judge films made nearly 90 years ago by 2020 standards. Here’s hoping the actual mysteries are enjoyable.

Lastly, I grabbed another Maigret book. I always look for that series whenever I go to a book store.

What have you all picked up recently?