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| parmeda |
LIKE THE CONCERT YOU JUST HEARD? BUY IT RIGHT NOW
January 25, 2004
Chicago SunTimes
BY DAVE NEWBART Staff
Blues great Buddy Guy, in the middle of belting out ''Sweet Home Chicago,'' stops playing his guitar, and chats up a fan at his South Loop nightclub.
When he picks up the song, a guitar string breaks, prompting him to extemporize:
''Just a few minutes ago you seen me break my string. That's not going to stop me. I can still play the thing.''
The live performance last weekend is pure Buddy Guy -- unscripted, emotional and raw.
And now fans will be able to hear Guy's spontaneous acts over and over.
For $20, they can buy a high-quality digital recording of the show on a CD sold minutes after the set ends. A Chicago company started by two childhood friends from Highland Park is burning the CDs on site all month.
The company, Pirate Entertainment, will soon announce deals to do the same thing with some music festivals. It is talking to other artists, too. ''We hope to be in on the beginning of something really special,'' said Dave Turner, 38, of Northbrook, a self-described live-music fanatic.
Turner said more than a year ago he began to wonder ''what if bootlegs were legal, and I didn't have to sneak around the Internet looking for them?''
While only a handful of other companies do ''insta-burns'' of live music shows, Pirate is taking on some big ventures, including Instant Live, a division of mega-media company Clear Channel.
The company has recorded a handful of artists at venues nationwide, mainly in Boston.
To get Pirate off the ground, Turner, an industrial cleaning supply salesman, enlisted Keith Walner, a boyhood friend who is now an entertainment lawyer and once headed a record label in Los Angeles.
The two hooked up with Guy's manager and inked an agreement to record Guy's 16 shows this month. The company hired Timothy Powell, who has recorded live concerts aired on WXRT, to make the recordings. Pirate splits proceeds with the artists and takes care of paying royalties.
That can be tough when recording Guy, who uses no set list and often plays songs by other musicians, each of whom receives 81/2 cents for every song under five minutes.
At Buddy Guy's Legends last weekend, the team set up shop in a storage area on the floor above the show. They used two burning towers capable of churning out 17 CDs every three minutes. ''It's really cutting edge,'' said Glen Phillips, Guy's manager. ''People love it.''
Midway through Guy's two-hour set, they burned the first of two discs to be sold together after the concert.
After Guy's act, fans lined up to buy. The company has sold about 100 discs a night, meaning as many as one-quarter of fans at the show have taken one home.
Discs and set lists are available at www.piratebootlegs.com.
''It's Buddy Guy live as you saw it,'' said Mike Illingworth, a Brookfield appraiser who has seen Guy perform 250 times.
''The raw power, the crowd. It's pure music with no fancy production, no overdubbing.''
Turner points out that the scratchy, poor-quality recordings taken from a tape recorder in a friend's shoe or ''on the answering machine of a your brother's cousin's cell phone'' could soon be a thing of the past.
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I have mixed feelings about something such as this...
As much as I love Buddy, any feedback would be appreciated before I decide to dump a boat load of $$$ |
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| M.O.W.A.T. |
Mick Jagger, please take note! |
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| Madafaka |
It could be excellent!  |
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| Jumacfly |
yes it avoids the audience recordings with people screaming "sweet virginia"!!! |
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| Lazy Bones |
I think the current / traditional method of taping and trading with no exchange of money is more economical and fun.
Personally, having to make such a purchase in USD (with the exchange rate) would be the same cost of trading 20-25 discs with international(non-domestic and US) postage. Domestic and US shipping costs would be less.
Of course, the odd show that's a small venue, rare setlist or one I attended would receive greater attention to make such a purchase. |
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| mac_daddy |
there is room for both, look at Pearl Jam.
and the great news about that is that I know that people from the Stones have been talking to Pearl Jam about how they sell their shows, etc...
personally, I think the CD option sucks, I like the lossless download option (Phish, Radiators, String Cheese Incident), and they offer mp3 downloads for half price alongside the lossless version for all those folks who insist on continuing to utilize that lossy format...
regardless, that Buddy Guy show would be a fun one to listen to.
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CHAT
ROOM aka THE FUN HOUSE] [
RESTROOMS]
