The day after Tori Amos shocked fans in England with a piano rendition of the Eagles' "Desperado," MP3s of her performance showed up in Nashville, Tennessee, where David Mobley downloaded one from alt.binaries.tori-amos. "The Tori community is loosely organized," says the 25-year-old cable TV employee, "but it gets shows to people quickly."
Fans have traded live bootlegs for decades ("Got that 'Dark Star' from Cleveland '73?"). But the tech - gadgets like laptop recorders, portable DAT players, and pen-sized microphones, as well as distribution methods like SHNapster and FTP servers - keeps getting better. With the upgrades, trading communities have spread well beyond the Deadheads. It's easy to find concerts by Beck, Oasis, and Radiohead. "It becomes, 'How much time do I have in the day to burn it?'" says John Bartol, a 35-year-old IT consultant from Alexandria, Virginia, who has been taping and trading concerts since 1984. "There's always more to grab."
Among the booters' most inventive tactics: using wireless radio receivers that capture signals sent to the in-ear monitors musicians wear to hear one another onstage. Fans can record a pristine feed of the entire show from outside the venue.
Obtaining copies of pirated performances has also gotten easier - plugging an artist's name and "bootleg" into Google is surprisingly effective. Or download the shareware app Direct Connect to get into SHNapster. That's not to say it's legal. By law, all bootlegs - even free trades - are forbidden. Or are they? Search "official bootlegs." For $10 to $20 you can download Pearl Jam and Phish shows on sanctioned sites. Wanna bet how long before they hit unsanctioned sites?
Find recordings here:
Ryan Adams: hometown.aol.com/hew40/homepage.html
Pearl Jam: www.pearljambootlegs.com
Radiohead: pw1.netcom.com/~kenko1/Radiohead.htm
Bruce Springsteen: www.joosse.org
Lucinda Williams: users3.ev1.net/~svwalker/lucinda_williams.htm
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