When I was 10 or 11, I can remember sitting around in my room on Friday night listening to one of my many Heavy Metal albums or one of those awesome K-Tel “Masters of Metal” compilations. You know the ones. They were these awesome compilations that usually had pretty kick ass shit on it and then one song that made you think, “Why the fuck is this song on here?” For instance, you’ll be jamming out to Black Sabbath’s “Heaven & Hell.” Then Triumph “Lay It On The Line” comes on and then all of the sudden you get some crappy Rainbow song like “Street of Dreams,” some crappy song by Slade like “Run Runaway” or even worse, you’ll get “I Love Rock & Roll” by Joan Jett. How the fuck is that metal?
Anyways, I’d be sitting in my room listening to what the fuck ever and reading (and even re-reading) my stacks of Metal mags. Circus, Hit Parader, Metal Edge, Faces, you name it, I had it. In the back of Hit Parader and Circus magazine there were always advertisements for free catalogs for bootlegs, live 8x10s and t-shirts. I would get out my notebook, write a short letter and send it off so that I could get these catalogs. They would arrive and I would breeze through these bootleg catalogs and man was I even in heaven. KISS bootlegs, Motley Crue bootlegs, Iron Maiden bootlegs, you name it, they had it. Most were available on cassette and others on vinyl with crazy ass artwork. The prices of these things were usually astronomical. Actually, they were probably like $25.00 or so but when you 11 years old, $25.00 is a years salary. I remember the holy grail for me was when I head heard that there was a “full version” of Iron Maiden’s “Maiden Japan” live EP. The commercial release only had 4 songs on it but this was the full show baby. The full kit and caboodle.
As years went by and I got older, I started going to record shows. These Record Shows were like huge ass dork conventions. People who were collectors of music of all kinds would flock to these places to buy, sell and trade some of the most useless shit ever known to man. Useless to you mere mortals for but people like me, it was like unearthing a hotel ballroom full of holy grails. In the metal world, there are quite a few of these holy grails. That Iron Maiden show I mentioned earlier, “Bats Head Soup” by Ozzy Osbourne which is an LP made from the original tapes that would later become the “Tribute” album, Ozzy Osbourne’s “Mr. Crowley” picture disc that contains a rare never played or released Ozzy/Randy song called “You Said It All” and Motley Crue’s original Leathur Records release of their debut “Too Fast For Love” just to name a few. The only problem is that much like everything else, as time progresses, so do the prices of these things. What I once had the opportunity to get 10 years prior for like 20 bucks was now $50 or $60. The issue with this that at this time, I was a burn out fast food cook making 8 bucks an hour and living at home so needless to say, this wasn’t gonna happen. I would occasionally save lots of money over the course of a year so that when the Record Show would come around, I’d have the dough to pick up something cool like that long sought after Motley Crue bootleg from Fresno in ’85 or even better, two record set of Motley Crue from the Girls Girls Girls tour in Seattle and maybe add to that a bootleg video of Twisted Sister on the Come Out & Play tour which was really rare. Those three items would probably set me back about a total of $125.00 or so. I would be so proud of these grails! I would take them home, I would play them, carefully put them into plastic sleeves and proudly display them on my wall for my friends to see and be completely jealous that they didn’t have them.
Lets fast forward to many years to about 2005 or so. The internet started to become a virtual “record show” for me. The internet became a place for me 
to find things that as an 11 year old dork could only dream of ever getting my hands on. Blogs started popping up all over the internet that were full of live bootleg downloads of not only all the shows I ever wanted as a kid but tons more than I ever thought even existed. Remember that Iron Maiden show I was talking about. That was the VERY FIRST bootleg I downloaded from the internet. I found it on a guys blog and I couldn’t wait to download it, artwork and everything. I downloaded it, I played it and lemme tell you. It was worth every fucking year I waited to hear this thing. I was zipped right back to being 11 years old again but I had to believe that it was way better hearing this as an adult. Maybe it would’ve just become lost in the shuffle of my 11 year old music hording existence but as an adult, it was everything I had ever hoped it would be. What else would I find? I would find live DVDs of Black Sabbath in Paris from 1970, Led Zeppelin demos and rarities, recordings of Bon Scott’s band before AC/DC called Fraternity, Dio live bootlegs from the “Holy Diver” and “Last In Line” tours on both audio and video. It was almost as if I was 11 years old and I had been let loose into one those bootleg catalogs with an endless limit shopping spree.
Some may say that the magic of the hunt is gone with the introduction of the internet for things like this. In my opinion, the internet has made so many of my wishes come true. At one time I could only read and see these holy grails of music but now I can possess them. I can enjoy them for all their wonderful, warts and all glory. So I may not have the crappy album artwork to put in the plastic sleeve or the actual VHS tape to put on my shelf but what I have is the experience of hearing, seeing and loving all these wonderful pieces of Metal and Rock & Roll history. Its like being an archaeologist unearthing treasures that have long been talked about and even sometimes fabled only to discover the reality that they are. Just don’t go calling Ronnie James Dio a dinosaur or we’re gonna have to swap words.
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