New Age of Classic Bootlegs
Back in the day, rock magazines like Circus and Hit Parader would have nondescript ads listing bootleg concerts on VHS or cassette. There would be one or two full pages, all the popular bands playing festivals I had never heard of in cities and countries I had never been to.
A tape might cost between $15 and $30 depending upon the quality and length of the footage. Not cheap for 16-year-old kid. I always thought some dude working out of his garage must have been making a fortune. And I could never figure out how he compiled such a huge list in the first place!
Anyhoo, thanks to P2P (peer-to-peer) networks±, these bootlegs from the 70's, 80's and 90's are now just a click away -- and free. When I was a teenager I spent hundreds of dollars on VHS copies of Mötley Crüe concerts. Now fans have transferred these old videos to digital and they are online for anyone to share.
Most of the bootlegs I bought were filmed with shaky, hand-held camcorders and then copied multiple generations...and then sold to moi for $25. Doh! Yes the quality of some are quite bad. But they were fun. And now thanks to P2P just a click away.
The most enjoyable footage I have found so far is from the 1983 US Festival. Killer. Watching Stray Cats and Ozzy and INXS and Van Halen -- on the same bill -- you can literally see the 70's melting away. It is very nostalgic. I got goose bumps watching Mötley Crüe again back when they really rocked, when Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee would come out on stage and share a fifth of Jack Daniel's in five minutes. Did you ever see that?! They were the real deal, the "Toxic Twins". But I digress.
± Try Shareeza or BitTorent. FYI though many ISPs throttle BitTorent.