Dear BOOT CAMP Readers, Boot Camp was my very first Web site I ever made. Today I make sites for a living. I guess Boot Camp will always remain ‘the first.' Over the past couple of years two things have affected my ability to update the site on a regular basis. First, and this is easy to say as any Web developer knows, I didn't have the time. Many people who visit Web sites hoping to be kept updated on certain topics may see this as a lame excuse but believe me, it's true. Boot Camp, when being updated regularly, took quite a bit of time out of my day. This was before the mainstream adaptation of databases, content management systems and the like. I could continue to keep Boot Camp running using the great automated software that is available today, but it's reason number two that prevents me: the nature of the bootleg world today. When Boot Camp started there were the ‘Big Three:' Crystal Cat, Great Dane and E Street (with a few more thrown in). Today there is the ‘Big One' (CC) and a million of others. I'm not complaining, but over the span of the Web site, technology saw the advent of CD-Rs, MP3s, binary newsgroups, file sharing, high speed Internet, bit torrents, SHNs and DVD-Rs. All of those have helped change the hobby, mostly for the better, but the most important influence on the hobby over the last couple of years has been a reluctance on behalf of the record companies and recording artists to pursue bootleggers as they used to, instead legally favouring the file sharing networks that millions of people use daily. That may have been a good sign for the bootleg industry. It was a diversion away from our hobby. But with all of those factors thrown together, it meant the bootleg industry and the number of releases, was about to explode. And it did. Today we have re-issues of classic shows, remasters of shows everyone already has and remasters of the remasters. The only remasters we are missing are of Springsteen's official catalogue! How many different copies of February 2, 1975 do you have? Enough rambling. There came a point in the life of Boot Camp when I had to limit the listing to well known companies, and try and weed out the shoddy releases from shoddy ‘record companies', of which there were plenty. But today, there are so many releases from every Jim, Bob and Susan out there that to keep a complete listing is next to impossible. I don't mind that, for a collector like me it's great. But trying to keep track of it all was the problem. With that said, the time and effort needed to update Boot Camp evolved from adding the latest rumours from retailer's distribution lists to surfing the Web and gathering every little piece of information from every forum, web site or newsgroup and deciding what is worthy and what is hogwash. It's something I'd love to keep doing but I just can't. Paying the rent takes priority. I would like to thank everyone that ever visited the Web site, used the classifieds, made a trade on it, and generally enjoyed reading it. Seeing Boot Camp on television, reading about it in magazines and newspapers and having people come up to me at concerts and record shows and asking me if I was the ‘guy from Boot Camp,' made me feel that the Web site actually helped some people. And that's all that counts. As I mentioned it will always be ‘the first.' Cheers and best wishes, Glenn |
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