Sharing something fun from another website.

NEVER MIND THE BOOTLEGS (2023 readme)

In 2002, Boom Selection ("blog of mashup, bootlegs, electro, breaks, glitch, grime and glamour") began selling, for cash moneys, a 3 CDr collection of audio files called Boom Selection_Issue 01, which came to be called NEVER MIND THE BOOTLEGS.

Pitchfork reviewed it, as part of an article about how the people making music compilations are the people writing music history. They wrote:

"One of the first mp3 blogs, Boom Selection also created one of (if not the) first pseudo-historical CDR compilation. The unofficial home of 00s mashup culture, Boom Selection attempted, as the liner notes to their collection state, to 'come up with some sort of 'definitive' collection of the scene.' In this case, that means 432 songs and 11 DJ mixes spread out over three CD-Rs culling the best from the plunderphonics/mashup world and an invitation to the listener to 'burn your own audio CD compilation.' The set also adds upwards of 75 officially released songs, tracks that serve as frequent ingredients for mashups or simply fit the cut-up/electro-pop aesthetic. This massive collection-- complete with file-sharing's occasionally dubious sound quality and haphazardly labeled file names-- set the standard for would-be musicologists, and the discs were so in demand that in late 2002 the site buckled under the weight of the workload, and shut down for more than a year." - https://pitchfork.com/features/article/5975-be-your-own-harry-smith/

Matthew Perpetua at Fluxblog:
"Boom Selection is back, and they’re selling a 3 cd-rom set with 42 hours of music called ‘Nevermind The Bootlegs’, which includes a manifesto about ‘appropriationalist music’. The most interesting thing about the tracklisting is that they didn’t just limit themselves to bootlegged material, they are including non-licensed non-mixed official releases by several artists. They are brave bastards. I’ll be ordering my copy soon enough." - http://www.fluxblog.org/2002/07/123/

Discogs provides a quote from the aforementioned manifesto as printed on the inner sleeve:

"The Bootleg Bible: these CDs aren't a complete 'Bootleg' collection for any stretch of the imagination, but I think they are a good representation of where Boom Selection is coming from. All the tracks have some relevance to appropriate music (with perhaps some exceptions) but they're not all accapellas vs. instrumentals. [...] I just wanted to get these CDs out there while the interest is still there, and also because we are better placed than anyone to come up with some sort of 'definitive' collection of the scene." - https://www.discogs.com/release/891083-Various-Never-Mind-The-Bootlegs

These appear to be the files that shipped on those CDrs, as shared by user bubbadmc on Soulseek late on a Friday night. Each file is stamped with Http://Boomselection.Info in the comment field which, you know, proves stuff. No physical copy is handy and no scans were included, so we don't have liner notes to offer. Discogs indicates the files were simply listed on the sleeve alphabetically per section per disc, and if you compare the files to the tracklisting on Discogs, you'll see that bubbadmc's collection has more than a few easter egg tracks that aren't listed on Discogs.

However, on CD1 there's a run of Osymyso tracks, and bubbadmc's run is many tracks short of what Discogs indicates should be there. To be safe, those additional Osymyso tracks are included in a separate folder for reference, until actual liner notes are produced that contradict their inclusion. (I threw in a bonus Osymyso video from that era encoded in the vintage realmedia format to prove I'm old school.)

Important to note that Pitchfork wasn't kidding when they called out "haphazardly labeled file names." The track names and even some of the artist names are frequently misleading or completely wrong. But many of these tracks were independently collected into The Bootleg Archive, so if you want to learn more about which artists are being sampled in a given track and so on, you might head over to https://archive.org/details/bootlegarchive?tab=collection&sort=title and start poking around. The stripped down naming convention for mashups in this collection is "Remixer - track name" whereas The Bootleg Archive frequently uses an alternate convention for the same mashups of "Primary artist x primary artist - track name (remixer)" which is definitely useful.

8/5/2023