Buried Treasure and the Shady Deals
I’m fairly certain I got ripped off. It’s my own fault. Dicking around on eBay in the middle of the night — as I do — I came across a Ukranian seller with a two-disc bootleg of Kyuss at the Opera House in Toronto from 1994. What was I supposed to do? The cover didn’t look like it was from the inkjet that had run out of blue, and Kyuss boots don’t pop up that often. I thought maybe it was a Cold War black market leftover, maybe someone found it in a Soviet footlocker or something. Whatever. I wanted to make it mine.
The bidding got stupid. I waited, as I usually do, until the last minute, and in that time, it went up past $50. I set limits for myself — I have to — and that was beyond mine, so I let it go. I woke up the next day, still bummed, skulked 
around most of the afternoon, and then found an email from the seller in my inbox saying, “Oh hey, the guy who won backed out, do you still want it at your high bid?” My high bid was $47, which, with the $5 shipping would put it over $50. I said I’d take it.
Now, here’s my question: Was there really another bidder, or was it just this shady motherfucker on the other end of the email trying to drive up the price? It’s not a bad racket, right? “Oh, hey, that other dude flaked, I’ll give it to you at the ridiculous amount of money you were apparently willing to spend,” and meanwhile, he’s the one clicking “Increase bid” the whole time. In all my time on eBay, I’d never had something like this happen before, where the buyer split and the seller offered it to the second highest bidder. And I’ve been second highest plenty of times.
At the end of the day, it didn’t matter. I paid for The Opera House, Toronto, Canada 1994/10/30 and set about waiting for it to come, hoping that the insult to injury wouldn’t just be the discs never showing up. They came. It’s CDRs, which is meh but ultimately not that much of a concern for me, and well-printed inkjet covers, but when I put the discs on to listen in the office — because a CDR from the Ukraine is most certainly not working in my car player — they had the two-second pause in between the tracks, meaning that when this jerk or whichever je
rk actually downloaded and burned these files to CD, they couldn’t even be bothered to click “Gapless.”
It’s happened to me before, too. The edition of Black Sabbath‘s godly Asbury Park 1975 show I have is inkjet/gapped CDR, and just like with that, I feel like a fucking idiot every time I listen to the Opera House 1994 Kyuss show. It’s an audience recording, not terrible, not great, but as each song ends and there’s that long hiccup of silence, it totally kills the experience. Bootleg sound has its charm, but having paid $50-plus for what will basically sit on my shelf and gather dust because just hearing it sucks has all the appeal of a pineapple prostate exam.
Never underestimate a human being’s capacity to fuck over another human being. I knew I should’ve stuck to the radio promos. Lesson (probably not) learned.
Tags: California, Kyuss
Why pay 50$ for something you can get for free on sites like dimeadozen? I would never pay that much money for a bootleg…
$50 dollars for a CD, no matter how rare, is a stupid purchase. Its a dead format. Sounds like you might have a problem.
Mate, just rip the cd to your pc and burn it gapless. Job done :)
Oh man…you’re just an idiot.
Jeez… what a dummy.
I would never pay $50 for a ripped CD.
Oh wait. I just spent that on a “massage”.
I just bought that many beers at the pub.
I finally got those superman underoos that I’ve been needing.
Dude…if it wasn’t you, it would have been one of us. Thanks for sharing the story at least and keeping us from making mistakes others have made.
At least you have the balls to reach out and go for shit like that. I wouldn’ t have been looking.
I guess that’s why you have a bitchin website and I don’t.
Cheers!
Dude, there are plenty of filesharing sites and whatnot that probably have that same bootleg and more you coulda got fo free. Use the $$$ on the kids or wife or a real boxset somewhere. You got ripped off no matter how you look at it.
P.S.
I have an ultra rare bootleg of Wino’s very first performance, $75 for you, it’s a steal ;)
Jk
File sharing is for communist teenagers. Long live the dead formats.
Haha, that sucks. ebay is tricky. I just bought three LP’s, old not so good thrash records…i am not buying anything until I get that shit in the e-mail. I spent way too much in that crap.
Come on soldier, filesharing is also for any old dude who’s hocked most of their income in their near forty years to the musico-industrial complex. It’s also for old chaps who download to try before buying and who still gormlessly spend the family income on real plastics. I got NO guilt whatsoever downloading matey, I pay my dues.
Still, I’ve made plenty of those bum decisions. It’s a sickness. Maybe we need to start a 12 step thang.
Duuuuuuuude…don’t tell yer wife.
Shit bro…you got a problem. Fuck boots. Download that shit.
I love ya man, but you just bent over.
$50 to me is a 30 of Miller and a $30 Stonerrock.com spree.
Shit…wish I had $50 to shove up my ass like that!
That’s messed up man. $50 for a B quality bootleg, at best. Next time you want a bootleg that badly let me know and I’ll put the lossless files up for you somewhere.
A video of Kyuss 10/30/94 exists. We used it to verify the show was actually at the the Opera House in Toronto and not Columbia, SC as there is some confusion surrounding this bootleg.
If you feel that strongly about “dead formats” just burn it to a CD yourself.
If that happened to me on Ebay, I would say that it’s a flunked description since it didn’t mention that it was CD-R (ITEM INCORRECTLY DESCRIBED), as well as a seller who needs to get kicked off because he’s bidding up his own items.
Here’s how to report that fucker: http://www.ehow.com/how_2050031_file-complaint-ebay.html
Afterwards you file your complaint, you can get a refund from Paypal (YES! ALL YOUR 50 BUCKS BACK, DOOOOD!)
That way no more stoners will be ripped off from his account – it’s your duty to the Kyuss-comminity – the legions of stoners hoping for a glimpse of lost Kyuss-tracks!
Case closed!
I was at that show and would love to get a copy of it. I’ve looked around the net and nothing. If anyone could point me to a link that would be awesome.
I also came across that there is a boot dvd of the show out there, if someone can point me to where I could find this it would be great.
This was one of my favourite shows ever!