Bootleg Labels

  LABEL INDEX
 

Original Gangstaz

These are underground labels old and new, with no illusions of legitimacy.

11 Records

Blind Boy Grunt

Responsible for a re-issue of An Evening with ... Frank Zappa & Captain Beefheart, and a yet unknown bootleg called Crush This Box, probably with Crush All Boxes material.

Cheekbone Crush Records

Quality-conscious do-it-yourself CD-R label in Stockholm, Sweden, with a CD of the vinyl mix of Cruisin' with Ruben & the Jets to its name.

COLLECTORECORD

Copied Does Humor Belong in Music? and the Mystery Disc from the Old Masters Box I (perhaps also the second).

Conehead Records

Do-it-yourself CD-R label guilty of a Big Mother Is Watching You re-issue.

FZ

One or two separate labels. The first seemed to release these bootlegs starting in the very late 1990s:

First two letters for artist, third and fourth letters for concert location.

The second released two double CDs in 2001, Zappa in New York 81 (FZ17111981-1/2) and The Mothers Down Under (FZ24061972-1/2). This is also a system, of course; it's the concert date, although it's the wrong date on FZ24061972.

HEAD/head

HEAD is responsible for the original An Evening with ... Frank Zappa & Captain Beefheart; Head (and they may be the same) have put out Time Sandwich and a Captain Beefheart bootleg (Out Here, Over There).

K&S Records

K&S Records was a Canadian copycat label operational in the mid-70s, making cheap copies of glossy product from quality-conscious labels such as TradeMark of Quality:

Mud Shark
Raw Sound
Nocturnal Records

Mud Shark sounds like a Zappa-only label. The additional labels Raw Sound and Nocturnal Records appeared on some of the Mud Shark boots.

NTB - Nifty, Tough & Bitchen Records
"Bizarre"

NTB Records was one of many labels set up by a very major bootlegger, identified in the book BOOTLEG by Clinton Heylin as "Richard", and "Next to the Beatles, his great love was the cantankerous Frank Zappa". "Richard in his time was to be responsible for one ten-album set, one four-album set and ten single [Zappa] albums, including the legendary 'Tis the Season to be Jelly". (The ten-album set is the  Mystery Box, but the other albums are never identified.) He is quoted (on page 195) as saying:

I'm a big Zappa fan. In fact my Mystery Box got Zappa as upset as Columbia got over Ten of Swords [a Bob Dylan bootleg]. Zappa in America has a hotline for his fans to call and he went so far as to have the woman who does the hotline ask for help in tracking down the perpetrators of this heinous boxed-set, and Zappa called the FBI and the FBI didn't want to be bothered ... I guess the problem was that Zappa was doing his You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, his ongoing series that has just ended, and Mystery Box was a giant You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore. A lot of reviews were saying that Mystery Box was better because it was chronological and didn't jump all over the place and didn't have all these stupid edits in it. That kind of thing can annoy you if you're an artist putting out your own thing ... Zappa's reasoning behind that was that he was losing tons of money and in fact he wasn't losing any money. Most people who do Zappa bootlegs do so because they like Zappa. They don't do it for the money. I can imagine people making money off a lot of other bootlegs but not Zappa.

Two more "Richard" quotes - from page 185:

I figured that rather than do bootlegs in the style of bootlegs I'd rather do real records that you can't really [get], something closer to what you'd consider a real record in the way it looks [and] in the way it sounds.

And from page 186:

Luckily, through connections I [was able to] work at the second-best studio in South California, a real place that had real quality control standards with real mastering engineers. At first I did it in conjunction with an engineer, I would say how he wanted it to be and he would twiddle the knobs and do it. But after a couple of albums he would take a nap or leave. After I knew how to run the board I would clean everything myself.

So, Zappa bootlegs by "Richard":

Confirmation from JWB:

'Tis the Season to be Jelly, Trick or Treat, and The Ark were ALL made by the same person. I have all three and they have identical custom labels and similar run-out groove etchings. They also all have superb and similar-quality artwork. The labels have the OFFICIAL Bizarre logo on them.

NOTE: The double LPs Dweezil Has Messed My Mind Up and Snake Hips Etcetera are also on "Bizarre" labels, but according to Heylin, those are not not by "Richard".

Other bootlegs that "Richard" made include The Beatles vs the Third Reich and Elvis Presley's Greatest Shit. He left the business when CDs took over.

On Stage / Sarabandas

CD pirates that put out a counterfeit of the Fillmore East, June 1971 CD, called Little House I Used to Live in (CD 12026, 1992). From JWB:

The ON STAGE/SARABANDAS series was an ENTIRE SERIES of pirated albums. I also remember seeing pirated copies of live albums by Cream, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Bob Dylan, and many others.

They were very common in American record stores in the early '90s, but it has been quite a while since I've seen one. What sets them apart from regular pirates and bootlegs, is that they were inexpensive (around $8 per disc). They were pressed in large quantities in some European country, and imported into America ridiculously cheap (or maybe traded for planeloads of cocaine). It is very rare to find pirated CDs in America, but this series was very popular due to these cheap prices. They only cost half as much as the original CDs that they were pirated from. Plus the artwork was very professional, and probably intended to fool as many people as possible.

This might make it easier to understand why Little House I Used to Live in is a copy of the original CD and not the vinyl. It is hard to understand why someone would pirate original CDs, change the title and artwork, and sell them cheaply as an exclusive "series". Once again, my cocaine explanation comes to mind.

Ruthless Rhymes

From BOOTLEG by Clinton Heylin, page 133:

A whole series of American bootlegs were now [1977/1978 - Ed.] being released with Ruthless Rhymes labels on the records (the logo consisting of a gun pointed at the HMV dog's head). Seemingly unconnected 'companies' were attributed to each Ruthless Rhymes release. One Ruthless Rhymes label, Audifon, was responsible for one of the most deluxe packages in bootleg history [Life Sentence, a Bob Dylan bootleg - Ed.].

  • Wax Flags (Ruthless Rhymes / Raring Records Rarities FZ500)

RXZ Records

RXZ Records are a very active, overt and public high-profile bootleg label in Italy, started in the 1990s, run by a huge Zappa fan, who for some reason hasn't been busted by the police yet. They seem to be on the one hand re-issuing classic bootlegs and on the other hand making new lavish boxes and basic, one-show titles:

In August 1999, they promised to release the following new bootlegs in September:

  • El Paso 25-May-1975 (2 CD) [listed now, as Bongo Fury El Paso TX]
  • Chicago 27-Oct-1981 (2-CD box) [first disc listed now, as Uptown in Chicago Part 1]
  • Milwaukee State Fair 8-Oct-1984 Part 1 [listed in May 2000]
  • Philadelphia 12-13-14-Feb-1988 (6-CD box)
  • Hartford 16-17-Feb-1988 (4-CD box)
  • Columbus 6-Mar-1988 (2 CD)
  • Towson 23-Mar-1988 (2 CD)
  • Uniondale 25-Mar-1988 (2 CD)
  • London 18-19-Apr-1988 (4-CD box)
  • Wurzburg 22-Apr-1988 (2 CD)
  • Lund 26-Apr-1988 (2 CD)
  • Torino 3-Jun-1988 (2 CD)

They obviously seem to concentrate on the 1988 tour, and quite a bit of their material overlaps, since they issue the same shows both as separate CDs and as parts of boxes. Their motto: "RXZ Records is going to give you what UNFORTUNATELY we can't find from the official lines!" This does not stop them, however, from bootlegging stuff a few months before it's supposed to be officially released (the Trance-Fusion guitar-solo album was scheduled for release in fall 1999, but postponed, for mysterious reasons), or from re-issuing bootlegs that have officially released material on them (even if everything on a bootleg has been officially released).

HK writes:

All RXZ records are CD-R. The label is mostly based with the picture of FZ on "Fred Zappelin" ... it's a papersticker.

Showtime Records

An American label of the mid- to late 1980s.

TMOQ - TradeMark of Quality
TAKRL - The Amazing Kornyphone Record Label
SODD - Singer's Original Double Disks
ZAP - Ze Anonym Plattenspieler
Toasted Records
Spindizzle/Flat
IMP/IRW - Impossible Recordworks
Phoenix Records
Shogun Records

TradeMark of Quality was one of the legendary bootleg labels in the very beginning of the 70s, established in 1970 or 1971 by two bootleggers known as Dub and Ken. They were quality-conscious perfectionists who pressed all their albums on coloured, virgin vinyl, and perhaps the first bootleggers to start doing real, printed picture covers, and later colour picture covers (printed - not inserts in the shrink-wrap!). Their original logo stamp was a realistic-looking pig with the words "TRADE MARK OF QUALITY" around it.

From BOOTLEG by Clinton Heylin, page 85:

With TMQ's foundation, all pre-TMQ releases were assigned numbers in the 71000 series in approximately chronological order. Though the first real TMQ release was Frank Zappa's 200 Motels [Live with Zubin Mehta & the LA Philharmonic], 71001 was Dylan's Stealin' ...

After a while, Dub's dad moved into the business and fired Ken from TMOQ. Ken set up a rival company, which he also called TMOQ, using a logo with a cartoon pig smoking a cigar, still surrounded by the words "TRADE MARK OF QUALITY". Ken started making his own "stamper" plates from Dubs original "mother" plates, working in cahoots with "the lady who owned and ran the pressing plant", and every time there was a new release from Dubs original TMOQ label, Ken's TMOQ would have an exact copy out on black vinyl and with a cheaper cover. Dub then modified his logo to say "Accept No Substitutes".

Ken shut down his TMOQ in late 1973, and set up another label called TAKRL - The Amazing Kornyphone Record Label with another bootlegger, "Dr Telly Phone". Dub shut down his TMOQ in 1974, after some unnerving investigation from the FBI, and took a short break from bootlegging. Ken's TAKRL became a major operator, flanked by many new labels invented by Ken, such as TKRWM - The Kornyphone Records for the Working Man, SODD - Singer's Original Double Disks, ZAP - Ze Anonym Plattenspieler, and HHCER - Highway Hi-Fi Collector's Edition Records, Spindizzle/Flat, and probably others upon others. These were finally shut down in 1976/1977, at about the same time as Dub resurrected his old TMOQ for a few albums and then took it back down. Ken stayed in bootlegging with some new labels, IMP/IRW - Impossible Recordworks and Excitable Recordworks, using black & white printed covers, and Phoenix and Saturated Records, who repressed old TMQ and TAKRL boots in deluxe colour. At this time, Ken was living in Spain, but his labels were all based in California.

Finally, in the mid-1980s, Ken chaotically resurrected his plethora of labels, along with new aquaintances (Shogun Records being one) and kept them going for a few years, mostly doing re-issues in conjunction with a new main label called Toasted Records that he had set up with "Eric Bristow" (another legendary bootlegger), in a last prolific burst of vinyl. Toasted stayed in business well into the 90s, doing bootleg CDs (which they first started pressed in Korea).

From Kristian Kier (October 1988):

This is what I found in a german price guide for bootlegs:

TAKRL (The amazing Kornyphone record label)

  1. USA 1974-1977: US-company with the most bootleg releases beneath "TMOQ". All records have inserts and are rare now. Matrix number here is always "TAKRL 1xxx" (single LPs) or "TAKRL 2xxx" (2LP sets). Rather expensive.
  2. USA 1978: These versions are nearly always re-releases (partly from own publications in black/white covers. Matrix numbers are always "TAKRL 9xx"). Not expensive.
  3. USA ca 1986/87: Late US-items of TAKRL with generetic one-colour cover all limited to 500 copies. Matrix number is always "TAKRL 14xx" (single LPs) or "TAKRL 24xx" (2LP sets). Not very rare.
  4. Germany 1988: All records are re-releases of earlier bootlegs with a simple insert like the original insert. The back is rubber stamped with "Limited edition of 100 copies only", which definitely isn't true in most cases. Matrix number is always the number of the original record. Number on insert is always "TAKRL xxxx" (2LP sets have "TAKRL xxxx/xxxx" and so on). Some records in coloured vinyl. Not rare and not very expensive ("Rebirth" Label).

Note from me: The price guide is from 1991. And there was a homepage of TAKRL not too long ago with trader section and sound samples, pictures of artists and so on ... maybe it still exists.

Zappa releases from TMOQ (in its several incarnations):

Zappa releases from TAKRL:

Zappa releases from SODD:

Zappa releases from ZAP:

Zappa releases from Toasted Records:

Zappa releases from Spindizzle/Flat:

Zappa releases from IMP/IRW:

Zappa releases from Phoenix Records:

Zappa releases from Shogun Records:

Additional informants: Craig Pinkerton

Wizardo

John Wizardo was a very serious rock bootleg collector of the very first generation, who hunted down copies of every bootleg released anywhere in the world up to the early 1970s - when he decided to start making his own instead. And did he ever! He quickly became one of the major players, and for parts of the '70s, no other label, except maybe TAKRL, put out more bootlegs than Wizardo. He kept finding new artist to bootleg, and was responsible for the first ever (or some of the very first) bootlegs of artists as disparate as Captain Beefheart, Kiss, Roxy Music, Curved Air, Alice Cooper and Lou Reed. But he was first and foremost a Beatles fan, and he stayed in the business long enough to make some of the first ever CD bootlegs of the Beatle boys.

His logo was a wizard with a pointed hat, a long robe and a staff above the letters "WIZARDO". He was to put this logo on at least one Zappa bootleg, Metal Man Has Hornet's Wings (Wizardo 365), and in 1984 a European bootlegger using Wizardo's logo put out Scandinavian Nights Part 1 and Scandinavian Nights Part 2 on the fake-Wizardo label Faboulous Wizardo Records (FWRMB ZX 50-1/2).

ZX

Little is known about the ZX label, other than that it made the famous 10-LP box The History & Collected Improvisations of Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention (not to be confused with the many-LP box by the same name that Zappa himself planned but never released), a 10-LP box of Ultra-Modern Stringbean, Nifty, Ein Monster in der Musikhalle, If You Get a Headache, Frank Zappa vs. the Tooth Fairy, A Token of My Extreme, I Was a Teenage Maltshop, Petrouska, Zurkon Music and Back on the Straight and Narrow (ZX 3651-3660).

Protection-Gap Labels from the Early 1990s Boom

These are labels that emerged in Europe (in this case Germany) in the late '80s and early '90s, when the advent of CDs co-incided with new possibilities to exploit gaps in the copyright laws of several European countries, which often were only protecting recordings of foreign artists that were less than 20 years old. By that time, more and more classic rock recordings were becoming 20 years old or more. These companies were actually working within the limits of the law, or at least in a grey area of it, and they hurried to make some quick money before the laws were to be changed later in the 90s. In the meantime, however, they discovered new and revolutionary legal loopholes ...

Armando Curcio Editore

This legitimate Italian label exploited the early '90s protection gap to release some Zappa records:

From Oscar Bianco:

Armando Curcio is one of the bigger low-budget CD publishers in Italy (especially for classical music), this kind of CDs are always sold in newspaper and book shops.

Flashback Records
Tuff Bites

German/Luxembourg-based protection-gap re-issue companies of the early '90s boom, perhaps with earlier underground roots. Flashback seems to have had a picture/shape-vinyl profile in its day:

And Tuff Bites made at least one Zappa re-issue:

From somewhere in Nordrhein-Westfalen:

Flashback and Tuff Bites are based in my hometown. I know two of them, one of them was in jail in the US by this famous party police catch some years ago. They first had Flashback, and then split from some of the other guys involved. One part of them formed Tuff Bites then.

They've retired now. One of them is a video collector, and he sold all his private stock of the bootlegs for low prices to friends (I bought some of them). He now has a regular job. The other one has a little record distribution, still bootlegs though. They had their stock here in Germany, but the record companies were registered in Luxembourg, for legal reasons.

I was introduced to one of them (the video collector) by a friend, who knows him for many years. That was around two years ago. I knew him from seeing him sometimes at my preferred pub, but wasn't aware about his job. I was told that he wanted to get rid off his private bootleg stock, and so I made a date with him at his home. I entered his home, and he had a lot of shelves on his walls. But all empty ... so I asked him what's this all about.

He was an employee of that company (I think Flashback at that time), who was something like a driver, responsible for the transportation jobs. He drove a small van, which was registered in Luxembourg, for tax purposes and because their company was registered there. At one day he had the van full of empty CD trays, bringing them from Luxembourg to their stock here in Germany. Right after he passed the border he ran into a police control. Sure the police wondered about his load, but they let him go. So he drove to his stock, unloaded the van and drove home. What he wasn't aware of was that the police followed him secretly, and so knew where the stock was! A few days later (or maybe even the next day) our customs search officers and police paid a visit to his home in the early morning hours ...

He [was put in] prison for two months, his entire video collection and his stereo equipement got confiscated. His record collection remained untouched. Maybe they had no desire to carry away such a heavy-weight collection, it was still there when I visited him. After two months he got free from prison, and got his stereo back, but all damaged. Must be their personal revenge, or something ... He was still waiting for his videos. (You see, I met him shortly after he got out of prision).

And now their stock: They confiscated their stock, too, and probably destroyed it (steam-roller?). They unloaded the house the stock were in completely ... but haven't found the second one in the house next to it!

Now, the problem was that they probably still were under observation from the police or customs, so they weren't able to get their hands on their remaining stock. I don't know if they [ever did].

I can't remember the cicumstances why I met the other one, but somehow managed to get a date at a local pub here. We talked about this and that, and sure I asked him about his bootleg buisness. He never told me precisely what his job was really all about, but have the feeling he's one of the main bootleggers, if not the bootlegger of Flashback and Tuff Bites. I felt his responses to my questions were really "careful". But he told me about him getting busted in that "faked bootlegger party" in the US, which seems to be known as the counterblow against bootlegging in the USA. But he wasn't running into details too much. The only thing I remember is he was in US jail for about half a year, and that US justice wasn't be able to get their hands on him for a longer period since his buisness was outside the US and officially legal over here (as long as such a buisness is based in Luxembourg). "Too much exaggeration is made out of this in the media!" was his comment, "They really had nothing much on their hands to bust the European bootleggers."

Great Dane Records

Legendary bootleggers of the 1990s and late 1980s who put out the deluxe Zappa box Apocrypha, perhaps the world's most popular bootleg among Zappa fans. From Clinton Heylin's BOOTLEG, page 310:

Rinaldo Tagliabue: Great Dane consists of a group of collectors. We select artists using our 'heart', [and] we select our production considering three things: popularity of the artist, quality of available tapes and the sales potential. There's nothing original in this, except that we consider Europe as our market.

Great Dane, powered by Tagliabue and "the Lawyer", were the first label that realised that it was legal in Italy to release live recordings that were less than 20 years old - you didn't need permission, you just had to pay the performer "fair compensation". In reality, though, far from everything Great Dane released was legal even in Italy - just look at Apocrypha with its various forms of material.

Imtrat
Live & Alive
Living Legend Records

Imtrat was the distribution company for Living Legend Records / Live & Alive, based in Landshut, Bavaria. A major protection-gap company, who were exploiting loopholes in European copyright law in the late 1980s and early 1990s, dumping their usually fully legal but unauthorised CDs on the market in mass quantites at throwaway prices, and making enemies of every conventional record company (and bootlegger!). Live & Alive re-issued The Ark as Live USA, with bonus tracks, on LP and CD; in fact, their very first CD. From BOOTLEG by Clinton Heylin (pages 320-321):

A German gentleman by the name of Wolfgang was the most mercenary, and undiscriminating, of this new breed of underground merchant ... Live & Alive was the most shamfeul Wolfgang incarnation. By 1990 there was no need to copy vinyl bootlegs. There were so many CD bootlegs that could be cut up and edited, in short disguised. The quality of the items he appropriated was usually excellent. Wolfgang, though, was not interested in competing with his fellow labels. Live & Alive was strictly designed for supermarket shelves, in huge numbers by bootleg standards ... of course, he might as well have been selling baked beans or fake Levis to the Russians.

Mr Toad [a bootlegger]: [Live & Alive] is crap, real bottom of the foodchain stuff ...

Later on page 321:

The most erratic of the vinyl copyists, though, was Torsten Hartmann, whose Living Legend was by 1989 providing cut-price competition for Bulldog and Early Years. Hartmann lacked the necesarry source material to put out good product most of the time, but when the right tapes came his way the results could be impressive ...

Torsten Hartmann: [The MCM] tried to put pressure on dealers to stop them selling our reportoire. But we have good lawyers and we offered legal advice to the dealers who were threatened by the major companies.

And on page 325:

Required to fight legal battles to stay in business, and unwilling to go back underground, companies like Living Legend and Live & Alive's parent company, Imtrat (who between them were responsible for the cut-price crap polluting the European market in 1991-2), were now merely biding their time before a chink in copyright law was closed, and they were forced to burrow back from whence they came.

Zappa bootlegs from Living Legend:

As European copyright law was straightened out through the '90s, this kind of "protection-gap" labels, who were not illegal underground operators but exploited loopholes in the law, faced harder and harder times. Living Legend probably closed shop before the end of the decade.

Older address for Imtrat:

Imtrat GmbH
Savignystrasse 1
8300 Landshut

Newer address:

Imtrat GmbH
Hofmark-Aich-Strasse 6
8300 Landshut

Nota Blue

The Nota Blu label made a series of protection-gap albums called The Easy Rider Generation in Concert, for example one volume called Frank Zappa & Mothers of Invention, and a compilation volume called The Flower Power Hippy Years where they lumped Zappa together with flower-power hippies.

Teddy Bear Records

Teddy Bear Records was an Italian protection-gap re-issue CD label from the early 1990s, with reported ties to the Italian Mafia:

TSP - The Swingin' Pig

From BOOTLEG by Clinton Heylin, page 226:

In Europe, the Germans and Italians had really hit overdrive between 1984 and 1987, churning out hundreds of bootleg titles. The German labels, particularly those run by one Dieter Schubert, had developed a reputation for deluxe, coloured-vinyl releases from quality source tapes. Best of the bunch were the Royal Sound double-albums and a handful of titles on a label that revived the logo, if not the name, of TMQ - The Swingin' Pig. As a vinyl label, The Swingin' Pig issued a mere fifteen titles. But Mr Schubert was just gearing up for the next bootleg revolution.

One of those 15 vinyl releases from Swingin' Pig was the Zappa bootleg Freaks & Motherfuckers. Page 278:

Dieter Schubert [managing director, Swingin' Pig]: The basic philosophy of Swingin' Pig is to make available historically important, previously unreleased recordings which would otherwise never see the light of day. Take, for example, Ultra Rare Trax by The Beatles ... The Beatles themselves say they don't want them out because they feel the outtakes are not up to normal standards. The public obviosuly has a totally different opinion ... The tapes are over twenty years old now, some nearly thirty. Twenty more years in the archives would possibly destroy the tapes, like many outtakes from the fifties, and they'll be lost forever. So even if the quality is sometimes not up to today's digital standard, this is not the point. 'Casual listeners' should, by all means, avoid buying Swingin' Pig releases; they will only be disappointed.

The swingin' pig in the logo snapped his fingers and wore a fedora. The lable soon became infamous for using the NoNoise noise-reduction system, which caused most of their CDs to sound not so good in my people's ears [this was a typo; meant to read "many people" - but when I discovered it, "my people" looked so good that I kept it in]. They were also among the first to legally release unauthorised contemporary recordings, exploiting a loophole in the Rome convention that made it technically legal, in countries that had signed the Rome convention, to issue recordings, without permission, from countries that hadn't signed it, and the USA hadn't signed it. Their first such release was Atlantic City '89, a triple-CD box of the Rolling Stones, put out in 1990.

Also with the moniker: 

Labels of Which Very Little Is Known

Angry Taxman Records

"Barking Pumpkin"
PAX Records

The real Barking Pumpkin was a real record company that Zappa himself set up, but several bootlegs have been issued on one or more fake "Barking Pumpkin" labels, some in conjuction with Pax Records:

NOTE: The Mystery Discs from the Old Masters boxes 1 and 2 were counterfeited on vinyl before they were officially re-issued on the Mystery Disc CD. The original Mystery Discs were on the real Barking Pumpkin label, and the counterfeit Mystery Discs were on a fake "Barking Pumpkin" label, which has nothing to do with the fake "Barking Pumpkin" albums above. A bootleg called Solo on Guitar, with material from the offically released cassette The Guitar World According to Frank Zappa, was also on a fake "Barking Pumpkin" label and is likely unrelated.

Black Label Records

Black Panther Records

The Live in Europa LP was on Black Panther / Electrecord ELE 03899, claiming to come out of Roumania; it was re-issued on CD as Live in Europe 1966-1968 CD, in "Japan", and then The Ark was re-issued on CD as Live in Boston 18 July 1968 in 1991 by an Italian protection-gap company called Black Panther (BPCD 014). This label also issued an 1960s bootleg called Caress Me (BP-072). Live in Europa and Live in Boston 18 July 1968 have identical cover designs; the only difference is that Live in Boston 18 July 1968 has a picture of Zappa and Live in Europa has Jimmy Carl Black.

Buccaneer

Bullshit Records

Guilty

Guilty of Live in Brest, France (Part 3) / 79 BREST ZAPPA PT 3 (ATR FZ 79 Guilty) and the triple LP Broadway the Hard Way (Guilty / Diamond Sound / Bullshit) ... perhaps?

Ignsoc

Phantas Music

(This CD re-issue label seems to follow a strict pattern with their catalogue numbers: FZ for Frank Zappa, UB for Uncle (Penguin) and Brain, NOBA for NO BAcon (for Breakfast) and LO for LOreley.)

Pyramid Records
Triangle Records

Pyramid and Triangle Records are probably the same.

Raven Records

American label.

Safe Records Ltd

Tangooo Records

The Tangooo records all have catalogue numbers based on the recording date of the show:

TCC - Three Cool Cats
Lunar Toones
Loonar Tunes

Three Cool Cats seems to be a CD label and Lunar Toones an LP label, and they appear connected:

A slightly other LP label, Loonar Tunes, who put out Underground Record, may also be connected.

Wind(s) Records

Wind Records of Sheffield, Yorkshire, who made Palladium, New York, 31 October 1981 (VAL02), seems to be the same as Winds Records, who made Live in Amsterdam 1971 (ZPP 1A/B). Live in Amsterdam 1971 gives the address to Winds Records as "Kentish Town Road, S5 7UF Yorkshire, Sheffield".

ZAPP

A german CD label.

Zinc Alloy

(Zinc Alloy was an alias used by Marc Bolan, who had said once when he was young that if he ever got famous he would change his name to Zinc Alloy and wear an aluminium suit. When he tried to do that, and release an album called A Creamed Cage in August, the record company got cold feet and made him release it under the regular band name of Marc Bolan & T-Rex, titled Zinc Alloy & The Hidden Riders of Tomorrow.)

Evil Records

There must have been two different Evil Records, one being a protection-gap outfit that put out Twenty Years Ago ... Again (EVIL 001, a re-issue of The Ark), and another who put out Thing-Fish - The Real Tapes (ER 818), because the two are simply not compatible. (One expolits a loophole in copyright law, the other is just plain underground illegal.) But they were both Evil Records :)

"Smile"

This label is not called "smile"; in fact, it doesn't have a name known to the public. It is identified by the logo, an "acid" happy-face, which appears on the following CDs:

home - vinyl vs CDs - weirdo discography - bootlegs - misc - hot lynx - e-mail us at zappa dot patio at gmail dot com 2006-04-22 20:02

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