What in God's Name Is A Bootleg?

Firstly, the dictionary says a bootleg is defined as follows...

"boot·leg
v. boot·legged, boot·leg·ging, boot·legs
v. tr.
To make, sell, or transport (alcoholic liquor) for sale illegally.
To produce, distribute, or sell without permission or illegally: a clandestine outfit that bootlegs compact discs and tapes.

v. intr.
To engage in the bootlegging of alcoholic liquor or another product.
To attach a transmitter to a dish antenna, creating an uplink via which a signal is sent to a satellite without the knowledge of the satellite's owner.
Football. To fake a hand-off, conceal the ball on the hip, and roll out in order to pass or especially to rush around the end. Used of a quarterback.

n.
A product, especially alcoholic liquor, that is illicitly produced, distributed, or sold.
The part of a boot above the instep.
Football. A play in which the quarterback bootlegs.

adj.
Produced, sold, or transported illegally: bootleg gin; bootleg tapes."

Now, ironically none of these are particularly accurate or on the pulse. Bootleg isn't perhaps the best term to use. A better term might be perhaps 'Bastard Pop' which is defined rather well on wikipedia.org as follows...

"Bastard pop is a musical genre which, in its purest form, consists of the combination (usually by digital means) of the music from one song with the a cappella from another. Typically, the music and vocals belong to completely different genres. At their best, bastard pop songs strive for musical epiphanies that add up to considerably more than the sum of their parts."

Fantastic - now we're getting somewhere! Essentially that definition sums the whole process up rather well. You will also find that bootlegging or, more appropriately 'bastard pop' is known also as 'Mash Ups' together with it's variations on spelling, punctuation and capitalisation. A number of other names exist, including 'cut-ups' 'booties' etc but you get the gist of things here.

I also managed to find 'Mashup' in the dictionary. Here's what it said.

"mash-up
n
Definition: a digital recording that combines and synchronizes instrumental and vocal tracks from two or more songs."

So is that it then?

In a nutshell, yes - but who wants to be in a nutshell. Certainly not the people that create these mash-ups.

You'll find, more often than not that it's not only the combination of an acapella and an instrumental, but that there can be a combination of two entire tracks, perhaps two acapellas involved and that there may be a number of individual samples and tunes used throughout. It's difficult to draw the line between things like extended bootlegs containing plenty samples, and say... a 'minimix' or indeed 'megamix' as people tend to call them. Perhaps all this blurriness and fine lines between genres and definitions makes the bootleg world the edgy place that it is these days.

You can be guaranteed that the mash-up world can give you what you know, in a different format. You will be stumped as to why you didn't think of such a combination in the first place, but not only that, but you'll wonder at the sheer marvel of the new combination.

Generally the aim of 'bootleggers' or 'mash up artists' is to take the two tracks (or combination of tracks) and make something better from the combination. Now, generally speaking this is almost always a hit or miss type affair.

The best thing about the diversity here though, is that you can be guaranteed there are artists out there not doing it for that reason, purely for the sake of being different. Somebody might be mashing tunes together to highlight how apparently similar they are. Perhaps people are doing it so that they can give it an obscene or comedy name, as lame as that might be, or even creating a mash, just because they want to mess one of the tracks up.

I guess that brings us on to the 'glitch' side of things. 'Glitch' is a strange term for a genre of bootlegs if you've never come across it before, so I'll explain.

Glitch generally means playing about with the track and its samples so that when played back they sound very stuttered. It's difficult to describe, but needless to say it's a similar effect if you stick a CD on and then continually whack the side of the CD player. In fact, that about sums it up. Now imagine what a glitch track might sound like if there were more than one musical piece involved.... Exactly.

So what else does bootlegging cover - the truth is that it covers so much that to try and define it in a document is a waste of my time and yours, however it should be suffice to say that it's an ever-growing community & 'scene' of people, individuals or teams of individuals who create tracks by combining one or more elements from another track to make something that ends up sounding completely different. The legality of this whole malarkey is always brought up and essentially it's not particularly legal.

What the bootleggers do in their own time is their own business, but as soon as the tracks become available to others, there are copyright laws and sharing violations rearing their heads all over. Cease-and-Desist letters are not un-common. You might find this daunting, but you'll soon find out that where there's a will, there's a way. The way things work make them what they are, and the bootleg scene has always had its success stories.

Every so often a bootleg pops up in the charts. a testament to the success of the underground push. There are sites that prosper on the community, such as GYBO - that old faithful and particularly redeemable source. Perhaps the only reason there is such a community element - if GYBO had never taken off as it did, we might all just be doing this in our own bedrooms - thanks to the 'scene' we've managed to get out there with others, make night-club events, TV programs, festival appearances, mix-tapes, CD's, albums, singles, radio shows, record labels, collaborations, remixes and a whole host more.

Ask any bootlegger where they would be without the help of others in the scene and they'll gladly tell you.

Anyway. You should know by now what a 'bootleg' is and why, perhaps that you should use another term to refer to it. I'm hearing you ask one last thing too. Why have I used 'boot' in the title of the site. Well for one; it's not an un-heard of term - bootlegging - it's still widely used - although wrongly so, but secondly it would have sounded crap if I'd called the site 'Mash Camp Clique' wouldn't it?!

Further Reading
- Wikipedia on bastard pop

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What in God's Name Is A Bootleg?