You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Are Bootlegs Still A Thing?

Episode Date: July 6, 2023

Peter takes us on a nostalgic journey through "Bootlegs" or unofficial recordings of the great musicians of our time.Check out "The Practice Room" at this LINK.Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open StudioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Instagram

Hey Adam, are you a bootleggar? I'm not personally, but it's very possible that some manis is from generations back might have been bootleggers. Ah, interesting. Some Martins as well. Not related to me, though. Sure, of course not. I'm Adam Menace. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to The You'll Hear at podcast.

Music advice coming at you. Coming at you today, sponsored by Open Studio. Hey, you know, we have another person here working on this podcast. Well, there's Open Studio. Caleb, show him the Caleb Cam. That's producer Caleb. He's out of focus. your knackard computer is in focus.

You are out of focus, my friend. There you go, that's Caleb. Yeah, look at that. Caleb, Caleb, running the... By popular request. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Caleb Camas back by popular request. Got a Caleb Mike, too, by the way.

And we, yeah, we did a... We had some nice comments in the YouTube. Hey, if you haven't seen our YouTube channel, go check it out because there's beautiful... Would that be something you might be interested in? It's something I'd be very interested in, and I think folks would be, you can leave a comment. There's a lively discussion that often,

goes over there for some of our episodes. It's just a cool place to kind of see. You can hear the pod, of course, but you can also see the pod there. My career is coming in the back of the house. WM. WM. Keep on. Keep on managing the waste. Keep on managing the waste.

So today. This is your episode, buddy. Keep it on track. You have to be the one keeping it on track. I can't do it for you. No, definitely. Definitely. Actually, I might try to give.

I'm excited about today's episode. I might try to give a duck and dive and bob and weave in different directions. I'm going to play the Peter. role here. You're doing good with your mic placement too there. How am I doing? I'm doing very good. Thank you very much. We've been instructed to have our mics in a certain position. Were you instructed

to constantly fidget with it? No, that's bonus. You weren't in the start? Are you sure? Yeah, it's a nervous tick. No, I'm really excited today. Okay, because we talk about music advice coming at you. That's what we're here for. That's what we love to talk about. We love to learn. We love to grow. We love music. Sue us. Don't sue us. But

the topic of bootlegs, we haven't talked about, maybe ever? I know. I'm sure we've talked a little bit. Such an important thing too. It's such an important thing. How did we let us get, you know, to episode 1178 or wherever we're at 12? We must have had one episode in that whole time on bootlegs. I don't know. But I mean, I'm really excited because should we just dive right in? Let's dive in. Yeah. First of all, what is a bootleg? That's a great question. That's because I hate it when people try to be like, oh, you're not a jazz insider. You don't

know our cool hipster terms with our hats, you know? So why don't you tell the folks what a what a bootleg is. So a bootleg is an illegal copy of something that is produced outside of the norms of production. That's how I would define it. So you could have... So that's interesting. I never thought of the lack of legality outside the law, running from the man.

There's no, yeah, to me, a bootleg, anything. And, you know, we kind of alluded to bootleggers in the 1920s during prohibition. Right. Here in America, of course, alcohol was illegal for some reason for a decade. They thought that would work. And so there was a whole industry of. bootleggers who would make their own alcohol or moonshine or even just run their own sort of distribution illegally beyond the law. And that was a business. There's still bootlegging of things like,

I don't know if there is anymore. Software. That was a big thing for a while. Software. Bootleg software. Maybe like a Chinese C.ROM version of Microsoft office. In New York, you would have people on the street selling back in the day bootleg DVDs or bootleg VHSs of movies. Or bootleg Movado watches on Canal Street. I was just in New York. Shout out to Canal street I'll stay in a block away they're still doing that bootleg capital of America but uh or you can even get like man my favorite is like a movie that's like a movie yeah right it's out a big movie yeah right it's out that week and then someone's got a bootleg on the street and you if you ever have you ever seen yes oh i used to buy later in the theater with a camera i know people laughing standing yeah it's

crazy that's a bootleg that's old school and so in the context of what we're talking about here a lot of us who grew up uh pre-internet yeah and they must and there's still bootlegs obviously on YouTube and on the internet, but this was really, it's a different culture than it was back in the day where people would go see live music, you'd go see your favorite players,

and for me, man, it was the mini-disc. That was the technology dejure of bootlegging when I was growing up. It had the size, the quality combination, the recordability. That's right. You could go external mic, but you could still slip it in a pocket,

obviously pre-phone. And then people would get really brash, like brazen with it. Like, they'd have it on the table. I remember seeing a Jazz St. Louis and a microphone set up and the bootlegging right there from the side of the stage. Well, I had a very good friend, fantastic pianist from Houston, who's been in New Orleans for years, Mr. Jesse McBride. Yeah. Shout out Jesse.

Who used to bootleg. I guess is it bootlegging if you have the consent of the performers? It's not really bootlegging. No. Just recording the gig. Yeah. But we still call it bootleg. It's still a bootleg.

Yeah. Because it's an informal recording of a concert. He used to record my gigs at Snuck Harbor in different. different things and then you know he was getting a lot of his own he was a student of mine young cat coming up and then was quickly getting a bunch of his own gigs but he would come and put the minidisc under the piano he had found the perfect plays yeah and he would always you know ask I mean I told him I was like do it whenever I was like I can tell you some better people to learn the solos but if you must go ahead but he would record a bunch of gigs and then he'd come

back on the break or he'd be like if you can remember press stop at the end of it on his mini disc. You're engineer too, Jesse. Come on. But it was such a cool thing, you know. And I mean, I think we all had the different experiences, whether you're just going and trying to absorb it all and learn something and bootlegging

some lick that you heard, but then to be able to record it. Because I mean, I remember before the mini-disc when like the adapt machine, they were expensive, they were kind of bulky. I remember being with Betty Carter in 1991, her stopping a gig at a club in Europe. And was like, yeah, she's like, I see a thing.

No, yeah, somebody was video. Which was a lot. You know, she saw the light and she's like, no. And then she made them. come over and take the, give up the beta max or whatever it was. How far we've come since those days. Now it's all fair games. I never actually bootlegged myself.

I never had a minisk recorder, but I would always, I was the benefit of people, friends and people passing around, basically what you call mixtapes now or oftentimes put on like a CDR or something. Yeah. And I had some good ones, man. I had some, I had some Schofield. Scoke! You know who might be a community that might bootleg more than.

jazz musicians is like the jam band scene. Oh, Grateful Dead. They were the first ones to like make it aloud and trading it and the whole thing. I had I had a friend who was really into the band widespread panic and he had like a whole collection of bootleg live recordings and he would just like listen to them just with pure joy of all of the solos and the differences that would happen and feeling like he was there. It was really cool. The interesting thing about it is that I feel like now obviously you can go and see kind of the modern equivalent of bootlegs is videos. phone videos of concerts. Well, that's what I'm saying.

Now what's a bootleg if on Instagram, people are sharing. Or live streaming even. Or live streaming. Or, you know, oftentimes like, Caleb and I were, we played a, we opened for a, what was that gig?

Where was that? The tool place. We played a tool place. Really? Yeah. Like Makita saws? It was. It was a tool library.

It was a tool library. It's actually a really hip spot where you can like rent tools or hipster both but um we played for the all night trio uh was coming through town uh matt villinger and peter slam um and they like were like hey shout out expats in kansas city i know right they were like hey tag us on videos and send us video like that's like bootlegging is encouraged and like we want to use your your self-recorded things and that we've talked about a lot like is a good video you know like or should you be there in the moment or you ever has ever behind their screens.

I think we've addressed that. And that's a little bit, maybe what's different. And then what I'm excited is we're going to be diving into some bootlegs from years in the past that are being delivered with modern newsletter technology. Yeah. But I think this idea, like what I'm excited about this is the quality. I feel like the quality is going down. There's more quicker.

Like you can go, Beyonce's on tour in Europe apparently now because my YouTube feed is like, you know, little shorts that people take up. I'm thinking about getting tickets. She's coming through town. Is she coming? Yeah, I might take my kids. I thought we could go together. You'll hear it. You'll hear it.

Bootlegged. Well, bootlegged. You can call it a business expense. No, but I mean, like the quality of the audio has gone down. So like when you talk about with minidivs and that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, most of the stuff I see, it's just like, even if it's somebody I really want to see,

people don't know how to, it's, it's too easy, you know. Because of the phone. Yeah. And like, we were bootlegging or like trading bootlegs so that you could learn, like, wow, can you believe what Roy Hargrove played on this thing? But you had to be able to hear it. And there was no video. And so it was like putting you in that audio place.

It wasn't just about like, oh, you see something cool what somebody's wearing. It was really about the music. Yeah. And I mean, it was for the Uber fans and for the musicians, basically. Shout out to Bernie's bootlegs. How about that? Bernie's cool. Yeah.

YouTube bootleger. Exactly. Good stuff. So what we're going to dive into today, and I'll just go ahead and share my screen here, see if this works. Boom. Modern technology. Okay.

Yonik was Dahl. Big shout out with Yonick. What's up Yonik? Yonik is well known. But in case some of you don't know him, he's an amazing electric bass player out of, well, he's been in L.A. for years. I know, I think he's, I believe he's from London originally.

I meant, I meant, like, he talks funny. Let's put it that way. Music lesson, online music lesson, OG, for sure. Pioneer in the online music. For what we do here at Open Studio. Big inspiration to Peter Martin Lessons, to Open Studio to the original.

Big shout out there. An amazing educator. I mean, he's played with, you know, Michael Brecker and just who's who of sort of the jazz fusion and jazz and pop scene, super successful, super great player. But he's been doing this thing called The Practice Room, which is a Substack newsletter. That's what you call it, right? Yep.

And so if you don't know about this, we'll link below in this episode and on the YouTube to it. You can also just go search the practice room. Substack's amazing, by the way. Substack is great. But basically what he does, he has this series called ASAD, which is a song a day. And I was already on his list. He does great blog posts.

great instructional things, but he started this, I don't know, just a couple of months ago, because he's on number 49 today. And you get an email every day, I believe he's like five days a week, whatever it is. But it kind of has evolved, or maybe he even started into this. I didn't really realize it as bootlegs. So for instance, this Brian Blade, this is Today's. This is Crooked Creek live at the Village Vanguard. You know, I love some Crooked Creek and I love some fellowship. Yeah, yeah. So let's just listen a little bit at that. And then, I mean, listen to that. You hear the vanguard. It's got a vibe.

Yeah. This is curated by somebody who knows their stuff, you know. Chris Thomas. Shout out to CT. Shout out Chris Thomas. One of the greatest. St. Louis's own. St. Louis's own, the greatest cat, too.

And I'll just sort of jump. We're going to listen to a bunch of things. And this is mainly, so you get a feel for the quality, John Coward. So I'll just say this is not CD quality, but it's so much better than iPhone quality. I love just being able to hear you feel like you're in the vanguard in 2005. I love Janik's words that, you know, it's the first two fellowship albums, you know, were pivotal moments for me as a fan.

Like, he really takes you on his story about how he, you know, his influence. I don't know if he recorded this or if somebody else did. I feel the same way about those first two fellowship albums, by the way. Yeah. Totally changed the way you think about how you can make music. And this was from a period where, you know, I didn't, I mean, I knew the music and was kind of, it was one of the short period of time when I wasn't playing. with Chris Thomas and Brian Blade as much. So I didn't follow it as closely,

although I feel like I'm kind of a part of this era too. But it's just so fun to like go there, to have the story, to have the music. It's almost a nice break from the video. Yeah, that's beautiful, man. And it's,

and he's really curated some great tracks. So I'll show you a couple of other things. We're going to put a link here to this, Caleb, so we can. Yeah, the practice room. The practice room so that you can go support and listen to some great music.

And it's, I mean, it's free to sign up. I believe he has paid tears. I'm not even really sure. but I mean, it's he's just such a sharing, you know, if you do go check this out, give a shout out and tell them they, you know, send our regards from the You'll Hear podcast, and that's what you heard about it because we just want to spread.

I mean, it's almost too much to, I keep it in my email and I cherish the times when I can then sit and listen to it, you know, because it's every day. But it's, I don't think they're going anywhere. This one is amazing. Check this out. So this is live in the Netherlands, 2005, Stella by Starlight, Keith Jarrett, Trio. ever heard of him. Yeah, and I mean, we've all, like, you know,

heard Keith play Stella, but I never heard this version. I've heard him play it live. Like, it's so exciting to hear another, so exciting that I'm talking over it. But you know what I'm saying? It's like, so you can check that out. But no, we just want to give a little stuff.

Beautiful. Yeah. This one's cool. Christian McBride with Joshua Redman with the Wish. Yes. Live in Boulder, Boulder, Colorado. Hell yeah.

And this is like, this sort of just took me back to this time. And then, you know, Yonk's got some great, just words to say and understanding, of course. Yeah, his little descriptions, that makes it sound trivial. He's like modern-day minor notes. They're just short descriptions. Yeah. Are so well thought out, and he's a really good writer.

Yep. And that really helps. And obviously, a great educator. So it just, he's picking out just the right things to think about, to start, you know, that spark. Yeah. Ah. What?

Paphethini. Pappetini. Billy Higgins. This sounds like Christian might have recorded or a bass player. It's like right up on the bass. It is right up on the bass. Yeah, I bet this recorder is on the other side of the base from the drums, because you can barely hear the drums. I know, right.

I mean, it's like put you back at this time, puts you on the stage with them. It's fantastic. It's fun, man. Just the sound of bootlegs of just like you can tell a recorder is somewhere on or near stage. Right. It brings back so many memories. Okay, here we go. This is something you're going to like.

Okay. Adam will either. I like the people that are involved already. Yeah. Larry Gold is with the Michael Brecker Quartet from Smoke. Oh Should have wore my Hans Groyner shirt Ah

This sounds like they were making a live Seat CD George Benson would come sit in Wow Adam Rogers Bill Stewart Wow I close

And smoke Smoke's a great sounding room It's great Great great great Yeah so I mean It's just Man this is so fun Okay now this one

This one is kind of funny Because I'd actually heard this one before This is not a Yonik Exclusive necessarily. This might even be floating around on YouTube, but it's so great because anyone who's following along with this, I think, would be super interesting. This is DeAngelo Spanish Joint, which is a song, I believe he wrote with Charlie Hunter, but I think Hunter might have added

his stuff on later. I'm not sure. This is kind of a little bit known, acoustic piano, DiAngelo. DeAngelo's playing piano. Exactly. And he's talking about it a little bit. I can wrong. I think I've heard this. This joint, I wrote called Spanish Joint. The angelos legit, man. Legit. Yeah, so it's just cool stuff that he's found here.

The singing is so good. I know. And it's... And it's... I got one more here. So it's all very jazz, like straight-ahead 90s stuff. Not all straight-ahead, whatever. I mean, it's all kind of within here,

but he goes into these jazz-adjacent areas or whatever we call them that I think are suit. They're right up. my chimney stack, as they would say. Your wheelhouse had a wheelhouse. If my wheelhouse had a wheelhouse, it would be DeAngelo singing and playing the piano. All right, so this is cool because I love this trio.

And I, this is Reginald Veal, Jeff Tane Watt's. Shout out Tane, shout out Veal, shout out Branford. And this is going back. This is 97 at the Knitting Factory. Shout out Knitting Factory. You remember that place?

Downtown, baby. Yeah. That was back when downtown, you had to play different than Uptown. Yeah. Oh, it's a downtown guy. Oh, Bramford's bringing this trio with no piano downtown. Watch it. It's going to get out.

Reginald Veal. I'm looking. I know. I pushed it up. The chord in this trio is one of it. It's so good. But it's so great what he says about Reginald here and stuff, like his insights. Reginald Vale has been one of my favorite upright players since I first discovered jazz.

I think he's hugely underrated player. Agreed. Yeah. I highly recommend doing a deep dive on Veil's incredibly swinging poetic baseline. Yeah, so I mean, it's just really cool stuff. Yeah. So, I don't know. To me, this is kind of the modern bootleg.

Yeah, what a beautiful way to share it. You can see. I mean, it's got crazy stuff. John Mayer with Marcus Miller and Herbie Hancock, live in Ohio. Pearl Jam, Life Wasted, 2006 from Albany, New York. I mean, it's a curated list of just really interesting stuff, I think. Don Gronick with Joe Henderson and Randy Brecker. It's from the context of, like, a larger.

music media perspective. These kinds of like homegrown substack, you know, I'm reminded to of like Ethan Iverson's transitional technology is an incredible resource with like almost every other day or every three or four days or something. He's putting out a newsletter with some great content, great, you know, stuff that'll spark your imagination

either from a listing perspective or a narrative perspective or a theory perspective even, history, that kind of stuff. And this kind of stuff from Yonge too, amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And look, if you guys know, the hardest thing about this is it's still a little bit underground in terms of like word of mouth. I don't know that folks, I mean, maybe everybody's going to be like, oh yeah, we've been following Yonix substack. But if not, and if you know it's something that we don't know about, please drop those in the comments on YouTube.

And there's something else they should do on YouTube. Agreement? The agreement. The gentleman and ladies. Man, people have been adhering. They love the agreement. They agreement. Now, not as many ladies agreements as gentlemen.

Hold on ladies. You got to agree to. Ladies, step it up. I know that our demographic sways towards the gentleman, but I know we got some ladies out there too. So the gentleman and ladies agreement, you want to explain it or you want me to?

You got it. This is your baby. Okay, this is my baby. So the, what is it again? I forgot. No, no, I remember what it is. We give you, that's how you usually start out.

A beautiful, free. 21 minute, 22 minute episode. Oh, but what will it be by the time we end? It's my friend. The episode is over. Peter, let's be honest. We give you this podcast, Lovingly crafted and curated by Adam myself and producer Caleb.

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I guarantee you that. We love you guys. Thank you so much. Thanks, Adam. Thanks, Caleb. Until next time. You'll hear it. Thanks, Yonick.