Genius Books Reviews

For serious music lovers who already owned at least 5 versions of every album release from their favourite bands, bootleg recordings were the holy grail that enabled the music fan to delve deeply into the history of their idols and to time travel back to places they had never been able to be present at in history. One of those bootleg labels was Trade Mark of Quality and it was hugely important in the history of underground unofficial recordings. The vinyl albums that they released are now highl...

Absolutely fascinating research exploring the many streams, from different cultural sources, that fed into the versions we hear today. Characters inhabit and shape the song over time. Harwood is nimble with details that might have become dry on the page through fine writing, tone, and enthusiasm. Rigid adherents to the concept of 'authenticity' may have their relations with the song broaden and deepen. Read even if you don't like jazz. This is an American history. Harwood's original research...

If you love music, bootlegs in particular and the ephemera that goes with it, this is the book for you. A comprehensively told story of the beginnings of the bootleg industry, starting with Great White Wonder in 1969. It charts the rise of one particular label, TMOQ, who started with edited tapes from collectors and then branched out into recording live concerts themselves. The rise and fall of this label is chronicled here along with beautiful full colour photos of original releases from the TM...

Trade Mark of Quality is the most famous maker of bootleg records. The first of all bootlegs was Bob Dylan's Great White Wonder. I remember seeing that double lp, with its stark white cover and blank labels, in an Ontario record store in about 1969. "The Underground Story ..." devotes a couple of dozen pages to the creation of this album, including photographs of labelled tape reels, recording grids, etc. They devote as much attention to other Dylan bootlegs they created, plus the Stones, Beatle...

I had more fun reading "A Pig's Tale" than anything else music-related in the past year. It brought back a lot of happy memories...of hearing a classmate's older sibling's copy of Great White Wonder in '69...of listening to and collecting Bob Dylan and Beatles Trade Mark of Quality LPs in the early-to-mid '70s...of pouring over the TMQ pamphlet/catalogue deciding what to buy next. The story behind GWW and TMQ is fascinating, and the book tells it in a refreshingly straightforward way. I never...

If your a certain age, and came through the seventies listening to Rock music and going to concerts. you'll have probably searched out these under the counter goodies known as ' Bootlegs ' if you were a fan of a certain band, getting hold of a live recording especially if there wasn't an official live album available. This book lets you in on how the Bootleg market came about in the early seventies, and mainly the label that started it all off (TMOQ) Trade Mark Of Quality. I personally found it ...

Very well written book with entertaining stories that made it hard to put down. Detailed accounts of how it all went down and what it took to record and reproduce those live shows onto wax to distribute as part of the TMOQ catalog. Took me back to those days as I was in the same building when some of those classic concerts with the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Who and Jethro Tull were captured to tape. It always felt like finding buried treasure when you happened upon a bootleg record in...

This was an excellent read. The energy, time, and effort invested into this story / crime was astounding - particularly for just a regular citizen. The author's curiosity was contagious - the way he laid out the story and the manner in which the material was presented made me want to keep on reading. Additionally the story told about the tribes involved, and their lives and culture was fascinating; as well as the history of the area. I would think the tribal groups involved would be honored to ...