THE GREATEST GROUP ON EARTH
Live’r Than You’ll Ever Be (also known as The Greatest Group on Earth) is a bootleg recording of the Rolling Stones’ concert in Oakland, California, from 9 November 1969. It was one of the first live rock music bootlegs and was made notorious as a document of their 1969 tour of the United States. The popularity of the bootleg forced the Stones’ label Decca Records to release the live album Get Yer Ya-Yas Out! The Rolling Stones in Concert in 1970. Live’r is also one of the earliest commercial bootleg recordings in rock history, released in December 1969, just two months after the Beatles’ Kum Back and five months after Bob Dylan’s Great White Wonder. Like the two earlier records, Live’r’s outer sleeve is plain white, with its name stamped on in ink. (More from Wikipedia)
Not long after I first got to college at North Carolina State University (probably in late 1969), one of the big record stores in Raleigh, the Record Bar (which was within walking distance of the campus) had several tables set up in the middle of the store that were piled high with bootleg albums. I had never heard of such a thing before, so I snapped up four right away, including The Greatest Group on Earth by the Rolling Stones (a live album, like most bootleg albums).
(April 2012)
