| Rare Tape Registry: Welcome | ||
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Welcome to the Rare Tape Registry! When our intrepid Webmaster Dave suggested that the Registry might make a nice addition to ArloNet, I must admit that I had my doubts. After all, as ArloNet is "The Official Arlo Guthrie Home Page," wouldn't it be inappropriate for the site to host a link that featured "bootleg" Arlo recordings? Dave, ever the visionary, didn't forsee a conflict and after some initial hemming and hawing on my part, we decided to give it a go! Arlo is, of course, a recording artist. I would hope that anyone interested enough to screen this logbook of rare audience recordings, radio shows, television broadcasts, unmixed soundboards and general audio ephemera would have Arlo's official catalog of recordings on Reprise, Warner Bros., Rising Son and Koch International safely tucked away in their hearts and record cabinets. If not, please exit this site immediately and visit Rising Son's "Get Stuff" catalog, as you have years of high fidelity listening pleasure ahead of you! This page is solely dedicated to those sad, monotonic obsessives trying desperately (and hopelessly) to recapture the sense of discovery they enjoyed when the stylus hit the first groove of Arlo's debut album. The type of fan who can seamlessly, in casual conversation with bewildered family members, rattle off the vinyl matrix numbers of Arlo's official back catalog. The type of fan who passes lonely weekends wrapped in headphones, listening to the rare and coveted promo-only 45 "Ballad Of Tricky Fred" that spins on his beloved turntable. Arlo Guthrie "bootleg" recordings are fun to track down and collect for the same reason Bob Dylan and Grateful Dead concert tapes are fun to collect - all of these artists are great in live performance, and every show has its own special moment: a rare song, a great version of an old chestnut, a visit from Pete Seeger (or Ramblin' Jack or David Bromberg or John Sebastian or Roger McGuinn...) As for the moral concerns of swapping of underground, "unauthorized" concert recordings? Well... Rightfully or wrongfully, Arlo has been bootlegged almost from the first time he stepped onto a coffehouse stage. As reported in the September 29, 1969 issue of Newsweek:
"By the Fall of 1966, Arlo was playing (Alice's Restaurant) at the Gaslight Coffeehouse in Greenwich Village. "All the kids brought their damn tape recorders to record the damn thing," remembers (Harold) Leventhal. WBAI, a local listener-supported station , taped it too and started playing it to raise funds..." WBAI, in fact, was raising such a sizable amount if revenue with the their bootleg version of "Alice's," that soon after the record companies came knockin' and Arlo's dream of being a forest ranger was no more. Like it or not, he was now a professional musician. -Hank Reineke View Database Entries (by era): 60's | 70's | 80's | 90's | 00's | Home | About | Definitions | Policy | Members | Search | New | Log In
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