Database of Led Zeppelin Bootleg Recordings
What is Bootleg
Bootleg is a database application for holding information about live rock band recordings. For great rock bands, such as Led Zeppelin, there are many "underground" CD's and tapes in circulation containing recordings of their live performances. As these are not authorised releases, the quality is variable, information is scant, and what little information exists is not always accurate. The "sharks" selling bootleg recordings often know little about the recordings or deliberately mislead prospective buyers. Consumer guarantees do not apply to purchases of illegitimate recordings.
Bootleg was designed to address these issues, and holds information about these live recordings in a number of cross-linked database tables (see also screenshots):
- Dates Table - all known events the band played at (linked to on-stage photo's, where these are available)
- Setlists - list of songs performed at each event
- Songs Table - list of all songs, together with Lyrics (linked to Sound files)
- Recordings Table - list of all commercial and bootleg recordings, on CD, LP or underground tape (cover pictures linked). This table includes a tab facility to link to external MP3 files on disk or CD, for each recording. The Led Zeppelin database has over 2,500 bootleg listings.
- Full cross-referencing between tables. For example, select a song and with a click of the mouse button display all Recordings on which this song appears. Or, select a date, and with a click of the mouse button display all the Recordings on which this song appears.
- Picture files (eg JPG, BMP, etc.) of the band, live photo's, and CD/album cover pictures. There are over 2,000 picture files with the registered version.
- Sound files (nearly 200 with the registered version), WAV, midi, and support for RealAudio and MP3 via external audio players. These sound files are linked to the Songs table.
In addition to Led Zeppelin database recordings, separate libraries are included for the solo work from:
Library |
Era |
|---|---|
| The Yardbirds | 1963 - 1968 A few gigs 1996 - 2003 |
| Jimmy Page | Pre-Zep and misc post-Zep appearances ARMS 1983 Firm 1984 - 1988 Page/Coverdale 1993 Black Crowes 1999-2000 |
| Robert Plant | Pre-Zep |
| Page and Plant | 1995 - 1998 |
| John Paul Jones | Mostly post Zeppelin 1994 - 2008 including Diamada Galas |
Databases may be developed for any other rock artist, and additional databases are included for:
- The Doors (thanks to Chris Doherty)
- Deep Purple
- Rolling Stones (thanks to Perb Hansen)
- Yes
- Neil Young (thanks to Mauricio in Brazil)
These databases were developed by other people so I am unable to offer further information or support for these databases, but they are included.
You can download a trial version of Bootleg. If you like it you can purchase a fully supported registered version from me. Luis Rey's Led Zeppelin Live book is also an excellent reference source for Led Zeppelin concerts.
History
The Bootleg software was first developed by myself in 1995, and I had my first "commercial" users in early 1998. It was featured in Record Collector Magazine in September 1998 (page 128 and page 129). The software is written in Visual Basic 6, and there are no plans to create a VB.NET version (you can thank Microsoft for making it extremely difficult to port code from VB6 to .NET). The software will be supported until 2012. Beyond that date I expect the entire Led Zeppelin live music collection to fit on a couple of BluRay disks, and therefore the need for a database will be redundant.
Other Led Zeppelin Bootleg Discography software
Some other CD-ROM based discography programs have come and gone. As an alternative to Bootleg, you may like to check out the following (if you can still find them).
- Godwin's Illustrated Collectors Guide to Led Zeppelin
- Discography CD database (Megaworld Encyclopaedia - this was available from a number of CD stores but now may be hard to find)
- Discography Led Zeppelin solo and related (the author is the same as the Megaworld Encyclopaedia)
| Bootleg | Godwin | Megaworld | Discography | |
| Cost | US$30 | US$19.95 | UKL18.95 | US$20 |
| Setlists | Yes | x | Some | Yes |
| Lyrics | Yes | x | Many | Yes |
| Cross-referecing | Excellent | x | x | x |
| Filters, sorting | Yes | x | Yes | Yes |
| Guitar tabs | x | x | none there | Yes |
| Solo years setlists | Yes | x | x | x |
| Quality rating | Yes | Yes | x | ? |
| Musicians | x | x | Yes | ? |
| Total listings | > 4,000 | > 1,000 | 1,800 | > 4,000 |
| Bootleg CDs | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Bootleg LPs | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Solo bootlegs | Yes | Some | Some | Yes |
| Pictures | > 1,900 | 2,150 | ~ 600 | Yes ? |
| Bootleg values | x | x | Yes | Yes |
| MP3 links | Yes | x | x | x |
| Updateable | Yes | x | x | x |
| Ease of use | Good | VG | VG | ? |
Notes:
1. I haven't actually seen a copy of Discography (right most column)
2. The songs list box in Megaworld release is not in alphabetical order!
3. Megaworld release only has setlists for concerts which have been bootlegged. It does not have a complete list of all Led Zeppelin concerts.
4. Megaworld release does not have concert date information for most of the bootleg recordings. It has track listings but without time information or dates at which the tracks were recorded.
© In the Light, 18 March, 2011 , Disclaimer, Son of Suckerfish drop-downs from HTML dog