I am an addict. No, it is nothing as serious as booze, crack, or methamphetamines. I'm a junky of a different feather, I'm addicted to bootlegs. Although the preferred name in these circles is something more like live concert recordings, or shows. The sound of illegalness inherit in bootlegs makes us run to the thesaurus and look for something more kind, more gentle. Like the veggie burritos for sale by the crusty looking dude in the parking lot after a Dead concert. Speaking of the Grateful Dead, they started this whole addiction. For many years the presiding kings of jam bands officially sanctioned the taping, and trading of their concerts. Many a jam (and bluegrass, jazz, folk, and rock) band have followed suit, creating a huge conglomeration of live music flowing from house to house, across the world.

I own somewhere around 600 hours of live music fitted on to over 400 disks. I have more than I could ever hope to listen to, yet as I sit here, I am already thinking of what I should download this evening. Live music has taken over my listening habits, and my musical life in general. Why waste 18 bucks on a CD of which I will only like half of the songs? In a couple of hours I can download that Lucinda Williams concert I attended two summers back. The price of blank disks has plummeted so much that I'm out no more than a dime per disk.

I am a bit of a dinosaur in the concert trading circuit. I have been collecting live music since before CDR technology was on the market. In those days we traded analog tapes, Maxell XLIIs, to be precise. Getting new music was a laborious, often unrewarded drudgery. You would spend a few hours searching the internet for a decent trade partner. Traders uploaded their "lists" to one internet site or another (you can view mine here) You searched these lists to find a good show, looked at setlists to see if it looked interesting , then crosschecked your list to ensure you didn't already own it. Once an appropriate show was found, an e-mail was sent to the list owner. If luck was your lady, this person e-mailed you back requesting your list. Several more e-mails were sent and a trade agreed upon. Copies were made and the details carefully transcribed, making sure you input all of the valuable source information. For in analog tapes, each subsequent copy is deteriorated from the original. Finally tapes were sent, and if you weren't dealing with a shyster then a week later you would receive a package. Too often you received your show and found it was an off night for the band, or that the sound quality was of such sub-par material that the tape quickly gathered dust under disuse.