The Ongoing History of New Music, episode 1007: Another look at bootleg records, part 1
On December 24, 1877, Thomas Edison filed a patent for an invention he referred to as a “talking machine.” For the first time ever, audio could be captured, played back, stored, shared, and analyzed.
When asked what the point of his machine was, Edison listed some future possibilities. His phonograph (as he called it) would eventually be used as a method of preserving great speeches. It could also be used for making audio letters, giving dictation, a talking clock, a telephone answering machine, and remote learning. And way down the list was “reproduction of music.”
That original talking machine technology has evolved greatly over the years and the “capture and reproduction of music” has moved way up on Edison’s original list of uses…the recorded music industry is now worth tens and tens of billions of dollars.
But the phonograph also gave birth to a new type of music industry. When it first went on sale, copyright laws weren’t ready. They had been drafted and enforced with the printed word in mind, not with audio recordings. This meant that people began making recordings that weren’t exactly authorized in the proper ways.
This gave birth to another industry, one that worked in the shadows of record labels, music publishers, performing rights organizations, and all the rest of the legitimate record music industry.
What started with secretly recorded Edison phonograph cylinders progressed through reel-to-reel tape recordings, unauthorized vinyl records, cassettes, CDs, and digital files freely traded online. You may have some of these recordings in your collection—and you may not even know it.
The original name of such recordings is “bootlegs,” Here are a few things about them that you might want to know.
Songs heard on this show:
- Pearl Jam, Animal (live)
- Smashing Pumpkins, Rocket (Live)
- Tragically Hip, Blow at High Dough (Live)
- Radiohead, Paranoid Android (Live)
- Foo Fighters, Times Like These (Live)
- Nirvana, Heart-Shaped Box (Live)
- David Bowie, Hang On to Your Life (Live)
Eric Wilhite compiled this playlist.
The Ongoing History of New Music can be heard on the following stations:
The Ongoing History of New Music can be heard on the following stations:
- 102.1 The Edge/Toronto – Sunday night at 7pm
- Q107/Toronto – Sunday night at 9pm
- Live 88-5/Ottawa – Saturdays at 9am and Sundays at 6pm.
- 107.5 Dave-FM/Kitchener – Sunday nights at 11pm
- FM96/London – Sunday nights at 8pm
- Power 97/Winnipeg – Sunday nights at 11pm
- Sonic 102.9/Edmonton – Sunday at 8am and 8pm
- The Zone/Victoria – Sunday at 8am and 9pm
- The Fox/Vancouver – Sunday at 11pm
- Surge 105/Halifax – Sunday at 7pm
- WAPS/WKTL The Summit/Arkon, Canton, Cleveland, Youngstown – Mon-Fri at 9pm
- We’re still looking for more affiliates in Calgary, Kamloops, Kelowna, Regina, Saskatoon, Brandon, Windsor, Montreal, Halifax, Charlottetown, Moncton, Fredericton, and St John’s and anywhere else with a transmitter. If you’re in any of those markets and you want the show, lemme know and I’ll see what I can do.
