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IN WHICH… I COME ACROSS FAKE NEWS

There is always much discussion around the question of whether any copy of a record known to have been produced in small numbers, and to be exceedingly rare, is actually the genuine, real thing. I read a post on the Facebook group, Show Me Your Record Label… Is it the first issue? on which someone had put up photographs of some BBC Transcription Service records. Underneath, another member posted the response: ‘Watch out for “boots” of these things.’ To which another replied: ‘Thankfully, when I purchased these in the mid-1970s they preceded the flood of convincing fakes of more recent years.’

‘Convincing fakes’ is such a fascinating phrase. If something is so convincing, can it actually be a fake? If it genuinely is a fake, can it be convincing? If you believe a fake to be genuine, then what harm is being done? Unless, of course, you try to sell it as genuine when you know there is some doubt. But isn’t the onus always on the prospective purchaser only to buy if he or she is convinced the convincing item is absolutely genuine but is prepared to love it anyway if it isn’t! The problem is always that if anyone, for whatever motive, declares something to be ‘fake’, it is almost impossible to disprove that negative. The art world regularly throws up doubt over the authenticity of paintings. TV series Fake or Fortune? is hugely popular. Surely, though, if you genuinely believe, or want to believe, something is genuine, then for you it is.

Also, we shouldn’t forget that there are also always plenty of people anxious to ‘diss’ anyone who has something which they covet but do not actually possess themselves, on the basis that they don’t want to acknowledge that anyone could have outdone them. Another correspondent posted that he had seen ‘endless copies’ of the fake records being discussed, sold at a well-known regular record market ‘for a tenner’. Presumably at that price they are making no pretence to being genuine, which may or may not make them a victimless crime, but certainly makes them much more affordable than something which may or may not be the real deal. But then came another riposte: ‘seen black and white label “boots”, but never seen any “fake” copies – these would be tough to fake.’ Now, people were arguing over whether what were clearly being sold as fakes if going for a tenner, really were fakes. Perhaps they were fake fakes?

Collecting is a very personal matter, and until and unless items are being bought or sold on the open market, only the individual who has a particular collection can know whether they are satisfied with the bona fides of their own records or even whether the records they are telling everyone else are genuine, actually are. When, though, did it become worthwhile for those of slightly lower honesty than most, to endeavour to deceive collectors of vinyl records by creating ‘knock-off’ copies to be sold at suspiciously cheap prices by dodgy traders online, at car boots and record fairs? And for more practised rogues to create almost exact facsimiles of rare, sought-after records?

Publications listing values of records appeared in the States in the mid-1970s, thus saddling individual records with a documented price. As an established record collector of my acquaintance put it: ‘That’s when it became very profitable to create an item with the sole purpose of duping someone for money.’ Never forget, though, that record collectors had to put up with many years of abuse from the makers and manufacturers of records and CDs, who accused anyone who ever dared tape a record or radio programme on their cassette recorders of ‘killing music’. They achieved this by printing a message and a skull & crossbones style logo on LPs and cassettes, ‘Home Taping Is Killing Music’, rather than encouraging people to tape what they wanted, so that they would become more familiar with music, which they would probably then go out and buy in a more permanent format. This persecution of innocent music lovers caused me long ago to lose any sense of shame over buying bootlegs, many of which may be poorly recorded, but often represent the only way of hearing music which has – or had – been withheld from the market for some reason.

Nor am I someone who wishes to commit to Hell and eternal damnation folk who make available to purchasers music they can’t buy elsewhere without shelling out megabucks to acquire. I’m not so keen on bootleggers who put out fake copies, usually shoddily recorded and packaged, of new material – but for anyone with a little nous these are usually easily identifiable and avoidable.

In December 2018, four men in their 60s were sentenced – two of them to jail for up to ten months – for ‘making and selling thousands of fake northern soul records online’, reported The Times. It was said that police had seized some 55,000 records and that the men’s actions had ‘cost the industry about £500,000.’ I read a fair amount about the case but still couldn’t work out where the industry had suffered this hefty loss. It seemed to be mainly 45s being ‘faked’, but obscure ones which aren’t readily available. Had the ‘industry’ wished to avoid this apparent loss, shouldn’t they just have made the records available as re-releases? If the people buying the records did not know they were ‘fakes’ (and many had spelling mistakes or mismatched covers and other giveaways for the wary) then they were the ones who were being conned, surely, and not the ‘industry’? I’ve bought plenty of records on unfamiliar record labels because I know full well I can’t find them anywhere else for a reasonable price. I have no idea who profits from the money I’m spending, but if the record I’ve bought does what it is supposed to, and plays the music I want to hear that I can’t get elsewhere, I won’t complain. An audience wanting northern soul records is by definition pretty much bound to be a knowledgeable one, so I’d imagine that a good number of them will have been aware they were taking a chance in buying these records. But perhaps I’m missing something. Perhaps at this point, it is right to stress the difference between fakes and bootlegs, as I understand them.

Bootlegs are illegally issued records, usually releasing material which has otherwise not been made available by the bands and record companies themselves, usually for reasons of quality control. Most people buying them are entirely aware of what they are purchasing. The first bootleg I acquired was a Hendrix album, Wow! I just double-checked. It appeared in 1970, containing performances recorded at Woodstock and Monterey, and in August 2018 was still around to buy for around £20.

Fakes, though, are designed to resemble the real thing as closely as possible – to be virtual reality made actuality. They are illegal imitations of authenticity, deliberately created to fool collectors and part them from their cash. The only saving grace may be that those being fooled sometimes believe that they are effectively buying something for well under its true worth and are happy to be doing so. They may naively think they are deliberately fooling the person selling them the product, when the exact opposite is happening! Then there are also, of course, ‘reissues’ which are actually sold as such, but may later be passed off by unscrupulous sellers to poorly informed buyers as genuine originals.

This is a fascinating area of collecting, but could it be construed as being unfair of me to suggest that where forgeries are of obvious poor quality, surely it is incumbent on the prospective purchaser to spot it and buy, or not, on that basis. I am happy to buy new reissue versions of stuff now virtually impossible to obtain as originals for less than the cost of a mortgage, but will also pay fair prices for originals rather than new versions if they come up. But fakes are a part of human life in many areas and our own inbuilt bullsh*t-detecting facility should kick in when we come up against what we suspect to be just that…