Got a favourite bootleg? | Fab forum

I had all of those and they are wonderful. A great way to compile a near complete collection. A few things puzzled me tho like maybe it was my copy but the Around The Beatles audio was the soundtrack tape with audience on top and not the clean tape which is out there.

However like everything already they are a little outdated. The Back To Basics collections (so far up to Rubber Soul) use more up to date technology for remastering, include tracks which have either recently appeared or are in better quality (eg Besame Mucho where you can hear the song fade as it originally did),and have more alternate mixes. Also the BBC, Hamburg and Decca recordings have all improved upon recently.

However its not massive upgrades and its down to personal preference so if folks find them and are looking for a starting point dont turn your nose up as many of them are still the best out there ie the Live concert series.

Most folks go to torrent sites which are mostly safe to use but you have to know what youre doing – others will be able to tell you what to do with those im sure, i havent a clue as i honetly havent used one. One of the most popular and biggest torrent sites, Demonoid, was closed down recently by the Law Authorities so users are having to find alternate places.

Another way is beatles blogspots and forums where fans post/share albums and or single tracks – like vonbontees remixes. Most blogspots have links to others so it becomes easy to look about. Its more about searching to find where you are happy.

The biggest thing to remember is to be careful where you go and what you download as otherwise you might be overrun by viruses – it does happen. Im sure you have anti-virus software but scan every folder you download before opening no matter where you get it from. It does sound paranoid but a 1 minute scan can spare you hours and days of the nightmare viruses bring.

I dont go near torrents. Would love to get the Twickenham discs of A/B Road as i have the Apple sessions but am happy to wait. Thirty Days is a great bootleg but i didnt bothered to take the Apple tracks since i had them already.

The Get Back sessions are a real slog at times, i got thru 5/7ths of the 31st January but hitting the numerous Let It Be takes killed me.

How do you have 2 Hollywood Bowls for '64? They only played there the once. 23 August. If they sound like different performances, one ain't the Hollywood Bowl. Love the Great Dane Complete BBC Sessions which I got on DVD-ROM years ago.

Great and easy source for bootlegs is YouTube. None of this torrent stuff. Past few weeks I've got dozens from there. The Red Light's On [3-disc] is especially good. Also found Revolution [take 20] – a complete revelation, and maybe the best still-unreleased track out there.

Easy to rip the audio. There's a free music editor, Audacity, follow through all the downloads (comes in several parts), and you can just drop a video on and it rips the audio (into mp3, wma, virtually whatever you want). I've got Twickenham Sessions [8-disc], three Hollywood Bowls, Candlestick Park, Sweden '63, both Budokan, 2 Glyn Johns' Get Back, 1960 home recordings [2 disc], Washington Coliseum, Melbourne Festival Hall, Lennon's home demos 1975-1980 [8+ hours that I've turned into a 7-disc], Star Club, the Esher Demos, and many stand-alone tracks.

Only thing I'd warn is grab them while you can. Found a terrific channel a few weeks ago, just after I'd spent a night downloading the Lennon demos, seemed to be a Beatles and Queen fan, and had lots of great Beatle bootlegs, planned to make that my next download session, went to it after about 5 hours sleep and it had been pulled for copyright infringement. Can only presume it was the Queen stuff because much Beatles stuff seems to have been up for years.

I should note here that I am not advocating the downloading of illegal material, although it does appear to me that much of The Beatles material on YouTube is not strictly legal. I am merely pointing out a way to pull the audio from strictly legal posts, if it also happens to work on illegal, well… that's up to you.