I'm surprised I haven't been able to find out anything about this on the web, but last Wendesday (before the WTC catastrophe), the four big bootleg retailers in NYC were raided. Talking to one of the owners, what makes this raid different was that it was FEDERAL, for the first time, as opposed to the previous raids by city authorities. The Owner pretty convinced that this time they were going to have to stop selling "the special live imports" for good (the last raid, in '96, seemed to have little lasting impact), and beef up their stock of collectable, but legitimate, releases. Since it was already an "open secret"


and the ax has already fallen and they have all withdrawn their stock, I think it's safe to mention the fact that the stores involved were REVOLUTION (formerly REVOLVER); GENERATIONS; SECOND COMING; BLEEKER STREET RECORDS.




Evidentally, this bust put the fear of god into the smaller places too, and I've only seen ONE other music store that is still openly carrying this kind of material-- but let's not name names in this instance!




I was pretty pissed off about this when I first learned of it(it went down just a day before I came out here to find a place to live!), but now I guess it all seems pretty insignigant in light of the large scale human tragedy just a few streets down from Greenwich Village that housed these record stores, but it does represent something of an end of an era.




teej


"I'm Bobby Fisher!"




PS: I'm using a friend's computer to check out the site, so any responses sent to my email address won't be seen!