CD-R: The High Tech Version Of A Fan Tape

(Dream Collector #6, March 1994)

Did you ever publish your individual Tangerine Dream bootleg? No?!? Don't miss the opportunity -- and take the chance to earn a lot of money from crazy record collectors!

You don't know how to become a self-made bootlegger? It is just simple: Take an illegal recording and hand it over to a company who will put the music on a recordable CD ("CD-R"). You will find advertisements of such companies in most music newspapers. Ask for a low number of copies: A limited edition will cause a high price when you sell the CDs. Think about an extraordinary title for your bootleg -- for example like Fractal Realities In A Shattered Plane or Alien Air Music. Create your individual cover artwork and use a colour xerox machine.

You don't know where to get the music material from? No problem: Take any Tangerine Dream concert or radio broadcast tape -- some hard core fans do have 300 or even more of these cassettes in their collection! Or take an illegal studio recording which is circulating among fans -- like The Keep.

You see: Becoming a CD-R-bootlegger is a never ending business, and quality soon will no longer be as important to you as your bank account.

That's it! Or -- do you suddenly feel any doubt? Do you fear that you soon will have to pay for hundreds of such "bootlegs" that might be released within the next few years?

Even if you can afford spending so much money for these green coloured CD-Rs (they are different from silver colour for regular CD bodies): Be sure you will never be able to get all of them. Due to trustworthy information brought to the Attention of Dream Collector, for example only one (!) copy of the Fractal Realities In A Shattered Plane CD-R bootleg has been made -- probably for private use of a fan, but also with the intention to confuse other Tangerine Dream collectors... And the next challenge might be Crazy For Dream. As far as we know, there are only five playable copies circulating... Happy hunting!!!

How antiquated seem "cassette bootleg boxes" compared to these high tech versions of fan tapes! Nonetheless you may still find new releases also in this very special section of the bootleg market. Cassette boxes come with additional "hand made" material like photographs or they include a home-made booklet, and they will, like CD-Rs, be published in a very limited edition -- otherwise the producers could not take twice or three times as much money as for regular releases.

All of the cassettes contained in such boxes are nothing else than fan tape recordings. And that is exactly what these "bootlegs" do have in common with the high tech CD-R bootlegs.