Last edits on 12/09/2023
Surely what unites the collectors of the old generation is the prevailing will of a cultural end, “certainly characterized by personal ambitions, but not by directly economic interests. Some might define this blog and the work related to it anthropological and perhaps it would not be wrong. But the goal is only , to share the fruit of years of passion and research with the rest of the users.
More than six years have passed since I decided to really collect and reconstruct the history of this label: looking for informations, mp3s or when possible buying albums, searching for different sources, photographs and scans. Behind this work there is a great passion but also something purely affective. Cream's Stepping Out was my first album, one of the first works that I listened to as a child. Already at the time I was fantasizing about reading the titles of the other releases of the label (there was a list of bootlegs in the booklet). Years later I continue to listen to that record struck by the beauty of those performances and the charm of that music - with the same intensity of the first days. Now the work is complete and I am very proud of it.
Good surfing and good listening!
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The bootleg CDs have appeared on the market since the end of the 80s, produced especially in Italy and Germany, whose legislation allowed to freely print live recordings making hypothetical payments of royalties to favor of the artists. This situation has contributed to the birth of dozens of labels operating in this sector, with sometimes amazing results: rare etchings of excellent quality, combined with very rich booklets, more accurate than many official editions. But the market has also ended up with bad quality CDs, lacking the minimum accompanying note.
Record companies have described bootlegs as "grey area, live recordings", describing them as "semi-condoned". Research into bootleg consumers found that they are committed fans of the artist; a study of Bruce Springsteen fans showed 80% felt some bootlegs were essential purchases despite owning every official release. Springsteen has said he understands why fans buy bootlegs, but dislikes the market due to the lack of quality control and making profit over pleasing fans. Frank Zappa hated bootlegs and wished to control his recordings, so he created the Beat The Boots boxed sets, each containing eight LPs that were direct copies of existing bootlegs. He set up a hotline for fans to report bootlegs and was frustrated that the FBI were not interested in prosecuting. The first set included As An Am Zappa, in which he can be heard complaining about bootleggers releasing new material before he could.
Throughout their career, the Grateful Dead were known to tolerate taping of the live shows. There was a demand from fans to hear the improvisations that resulted from each show, and taping appealed to the band's general community ethos.They were unique among bands in that their live shows tended not to be pressed and packaged as LPs, but remained in tape form to be shared between tapers.The group were strongly opposed to commercial bootlegging and policed stores that sold them, while the saturation of tapes among fans suppressed any demand for product. In 1985, the Dead, after years of tolerance, officially endorsed live taping of their shows, and set up dedicated areas that they believed gave the best sound recording quality. Other bands, including Pearl Jam, Phish and the Dave Matthews Band tolerate taping in a similar manner to the Dead, provided no profit is involved. Because of the questionable legality of bootlegs, fans have sometimes simply dubbed a bootleg onto tape and freely passed it onto others.
The proliferation of burned CDs has created a great deal of confusion and has often been misled and it is no longer so easy to recognize one another. In recent years, the production of bootlegs with new recordings seems to be falling while always very strong is the piracy itself that makes illegal copies of regular CDs.
In the mid-1990s, as a result of pressure from other nations such as the United States and Great Britain, copyright laws were amended to block these "legal" bootlegs. The production of actual bootlegs began, especially in Italy and Japan, very expensive and difficult to find.
The publicity surrounding raids staged all across the continent sent bootleggers even further underground. Around this period most major bootlegging operations moved to Europe or Japan, where bootlegs continued to come out and get imported into the United States at ever greater cost to the collector.
Alegra, American Concert Series (ACS), Aphrodites Studios, Aulica/Aulica Deluxe, Big Music, Capricorn Records, Chapter One, Classical Shots On CD, Continental Sounds, Deep Records, Discomagic (a spin-off from On Stage label), Discurios, Double Time, Eagle Music, Entertainers, Exile Records, Fancy Pantry, Flamingo, Grand Pick Records (same company as the Swingin' Pig), Home, Insect Records, Jolly Roger Records, Kobra Records, Koine Records, Limes, Live & Alive, Live Experience (The), Live Storm, Luna Records, Men At Work, Minotaur Records, Moonlight Records, New Plastic Records, OffRoadTracks, On Stage, Pacific, Post Script, Rock Calendar Records, Roundpin Productions, Satelite Records, Silver Shadow, Smoking Pig (a spin-off from Silver Rarities), Sugarcane Records, Tie Dye Records, Tintagel and Wild Bird Records were another mostly low budget bootleg companies that issued some rather not worthwhiling titles bewteen late 1980's and mid 1990's. Often they just copied material from older European or early Far East labels, adding sometimes bonus tracks taken from worn vinyl. In this context fits also a label called Oil Well, object of this site.
Oil Well was an italian unofficial record label that published between 1993 and 1995 a series of audience and broadcast recordings. Some of its publications are clones, copies of other bootlegs of the period released by different labels. Bob Dylan's The Genuine Basement Tapes; The Doors' Complete Matrix Club Tapes; The Rolling Stones' Philadelphia Special I and II are just some examples.
In some cases, the quality of the selected recordings is very high often as regards the audio quality. These bootlegs offer an excellent image of the various bands, in some cases, better than the official material of the time. This is the reason why many of its bootlegs have been released officially in different moments: Ladies And Gentlemen The Grateful Dead, Cream’s BBC Sessions; Pink Floyd’s The Early Years 1965-1972, Led Zeppelin’s BBC Sessions and Jimi Hendrix’s Experience’s – Electric Ladyland 50th Edition.
Record companies have described bootlegs as "grey area, live recordings", describing them as "semi-condoned". Research into bootleg consumers found that they are committed fans of the artist; a study of Bruce Springsteen fans showed 80% felt some bootlegs were essential purchases despite owning every official release. Springsteen has said he understands why fans buy bootlegs, but dislikes the market due to the lack of quality control and making profit over pleasing fans. Frank Zappa hated bootlegs and wished to control his recordings, so he created the Beat The Boots boxed sets, each containing eight LPs that were direct copies of existing bootlegs. He set up a hotline for fans to report bootlegs and was frustrated that the FBI were not interested in prosecuting. The first set included As An Am Zappa, in which he can be heard complaining about bootleggers releasing new material before he could.
Throughout their career, the Grateful Dead were known to tolerate taping of the live shows. There was a demand from fans to hear the improvisations that resulted from each show, and taping appealed to the band's general community ethos.They were unique among bands in that their live shows tended not to be pressed and packaged as LPs, but remained in tape form to be shared between tapers.The group were strongly opposed to commercial bootlegging and policed stores that sold them, while the saturation of tapes among fans suppressed any demand for product. In 1985, the Dead, after years of tolerance, officially endorsed live taping of their shows, and set up dedicated areas that they believed gave the best sound recording quality. Other bands, including Pearl Jam, Phish and the Dave Matthews Band tolerate taping in a similar manner to the Dead, provided no profit is involved. Because of the questionable legality of bootlegs, fans have sometimes simply dubbed a bootleg onto tape and freely passed it onto others.
The proliferation of burned CDs has created a great deal of confusion and has often been misled and it is no longer so easy to recognize one another. In recent years, the production of bootlegs with new recordings seems to be falling while always very strong is the piracy itself that makes illegal copies of regular CDs.
In the mid-1990s, as a result of pressure from other nations such as the United States and Great Britain, copyright laws were amended to block these "legal" bootlegs. The production of actual bootlegs began, especially in Italy and Japan, very expensive and difficult to find.
The publicity surrounding raids staged all across the continent sent bootleggers even further underground. Around this period most major bootlegging operations moved to Europe or Japan, where bootlegs continued to come out and get imported into the United States at ever greater cost to the collector.
Alegra, American Concert Series (ACS), Aphrodites Studios, Aulica/Aulica Deluxe, Big Music, Capricorn Records, Chapter One, Classical Shots On CD, Continental Sounds, Deep Records, Discomagic (a spin-off from On Stage label), Discurios, Double Time, Eagle Music, Entertainers, Exile Records, Fancy Pantry, Flamingo, Grand Pick Records (same company as the Swingin' Pig), Home, Insect Records, Jolly Roger Records, Kobra Records, Koine Records, Limes, Live & Alive, Live Experience (The), Live Storm, Luna Records, Men At Work, Minotaur Records, Moonlight Records, New Plastic Records, OffRoadTracks, On Stage, Pacific, Post Script, Rock Calendar Records, Roundpin Productions, Satelite Records, Silver Shadow, Smoking Pig (a spin-off from Silver Rarities), Sugarcane Records, Tie Dye Records, Tintagel and Wild Bird Records were another mostly low budget bootleg companies that issued some rather not worthwhiling titles bewteen late 1980's and mid 1990's. Often they just copied material from older European or early Far East labels, adding sometimes bonus tracks taken from worn vinyl. In this context fits also a label called Oil Well, object of this site.
Oil Well was an italian unofficial record label that published between 1993 and 1995 a series of audience and broadcast recordings. Some of its publications are clones, copies of other bootlegs of the period released by different labels. Bob Dylan's The Genuine Basement Tapes; The Doors' Complete Matrix Club Tapes; The Rolling Stones' Philadelphia Special I and II are just some examples.
In some cases, the quality of the selected recordings is very high often as regards the audio quality. These bootlegs offer an excellent image of the various bands, in some cases, better than the official material of the time. This is the reason why many of its bootlegs have been released officially in different moments: Ladies And Gentlemen The Grateful Dead, Cream’s BBC Sessions; Pink Floyd’s The Early Years 1965-1972, Led Zeppelin’s BBC Sessions and Jimi Hendrix’s Experience’s – Electric Ladyland 50th Edition.
Very often, as with unofficial publications (not only for this record label) the associated dates are incorrect. Here we tried to report the correct recording date and the correct location for each bootleg/concert all inserted in the information file attached to each album.
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As said there are numerous publications in common with The Swingin 'Pig Label. "Oil Well" company bought out "Swingin' Pig Records". In particular some Pink Floyd's bootlegs appeared under the "Oil Well" label but some of them were in fact digital copies (same quality) of old "Swingin' Pig". Some examples: "Echoes" is a reissue of "One Of These Days", "Green Is The Colour" is a reissue of "Amsterdam 69", "Black Wizard" and "White Witch" are a reissue of "Live In Montreux". Other albums are in common with Oh Boy label and with Fabbri Editori’s series "I Miti del Rock Live" (another interesting project released in Italy and Spain simultaneously) published with a different name and different artwork.Some bootlegs are very rare and have been published with an alternate coloured cover (The Doors Touch Me; Pink Floyd - Green is the colour; The Beatles - Get Back; Jethro Tull - Back to the family; Jimi Hendrix - Voodoo Chile; Lou Reed - Streets of Berlin; Otis Redding - Try a Little Tenderness; Pink Floyd – Echoes; Rod Stewart & The Faces – Maggie Mae; The Who – Pinball Wizard) and some (1 to 15, 17 to 20, 30, 35 to 39, 42, 43, 46, 47) have been republished (?) with an OBI - a piece of paper wrapped around the spine of Japanese CDs. More simply, an OBI has been attached to some publications. They are not reprints, the editions are and always remain of the first 90s. What changes is clearly the price of these bootlegs. But the collector's market is a curious thing! Many publications of the label appear to be unknown; in any case, our project starts with Rolling Stones’s As Tears Go By (RSC CD 001) and ends with Eagles & Little Feat – Sailin’ Shoes (RSC CD 149).
Helpful links:
Sources used:
Missing:
RSC 96 113 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 140 143 147 148 150
Download the entire collection here!
https://t.me/oilwellrscbootlegs
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Please notice that this bootleg database is just for informative purpose.
We don't promote nor sell any bootlegs: everything here is for reference only
If you want to contribute to this site by providing informations about bootlegs or have notice some incorrect informations on this site (or if you have HQ scans of the albums and pictures of the silver CDs) please feel free to send an email to the site administrator.
_________________________________________________________________________
Please notice that this bootleg database is just for informative purpose.
We don't promote nor sell any bootlegs: everything here is for reference only
If you want to contribute to this site by providing informations about bootlegs or have notice some incorrect informations on this site (or if you have HQ scans of the albums and pictures of the silver CDs) please feel free to send an email to the site administrator.
Other project here: Il Dizionario del Rock - Armando Curcio editore
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