I have just been given a copy of The Beatles Esher Demo. It was a very kind and thoughtful gift. The Esher Demo was made in spring of 1968 after The Beatles returned home from India
The interesting thing was as soon as I mentioned I had a copy I was asked whether I downloaded it. This of course was the sensible thing to do, but then we live in an age where there’s really no such thing as a bootleg any more.
Pop culture produces two contradictory but complimentary modes of knowledge. One is popular; mass culture, mass enthusiasm and sometimes even mass participation. It has the all the appearance of democracy, i.e. the public gets what the public wants. More often than not a mysterious, ruinous law of averages seems to triumph. What the public gets seemingly no one wants. The response to this is esoteric knowledge, cult followings and very particular enthusiasms. Bootlegs are just one aspect of this. There is also an apparent democracy here too, the solidarity of the initiated; the negation of this is tribalism.
The point is each of these modes conditions the other. Sometimes the esoteric and alternative culture grows and for a brief period dominates mass culture. This is of course unsustainable. In the mid-nineties indie bands were having number one hits, which begged the question, in what sense was this ‘indie’ music any more?
An important side effect of the bourgeois revolution was democracy. The events of the revolution took millions upon millions of people of feudal bondage and thrust them into public life. This democracy however is relentlessly subverted by the commodity form. In the case of culture we see either a fake democracy, where the means of cultural production and dissemination remain in the hands of a minority, or a cultural cottage industry stamped by a sectarian mindset.