by Snaithbert Collins
PALO ALTO, CA – An amazingly huge fan of the super awesome folk rock group, “The Turtlenecks,” recently procured a really hard to find bootleg album at the Sci-Fi Comic & Musicon in downtown Santa Clara, sources reported today. The album, which was apparently bootlegged in 1988 during a live Turtlenecks show from the Maui Volcano, is considered very difficult to come by and usually sells for over $100 at trade shows and over the internet. But fortune was smiling on Palo Alto resident Snaithbert Collins, when he managed to snag a copy for only $20.00 at the recent science fiction and music trade show.
“I totally can’t believe I found it this cheap,” said Collins, 28, who had been searching in vain for the bootleg recording since 1992, when a guy he met at a Turtlenecks show in San Diego told him of the existence of the bootleg. “At one point I wasn’t even sure it was really out there. I mean I was at all four of the Maui shows and I never saw anyone with a tape recorder. But then I saw it at a record store and I was all set to buy it, until I saw it was a hundred bucks and I was like, ‘What? You gotta be yanking me!’ This fat guy behind the counter told me I’d never find it for lower than that, but I guess this just proves you should never say never.”
The highly sought after bootleg, which often sells for as much as $125.00, evidently came with a snazzy new label which was created on an inkjet printer and boasts a really, really neat hand drawn rendering of The Turtlenecks. The music itself was apparently recorded over a cassette copy of the 1991 “Spin Doctors” release, Pocket Full of Kryptonite. “Yeah, someone just put some tape over the two little holes on top and recorded over it,” said Collins, who admits that he’s just happy to have the music and doesn’t care that some people who see the tape might actually think he listens to “The Spin Doctors.” Collins maintains that owning the bootlegged tape has added new dimensions to his life as well as renewed the hope that eight years of working for a heartless company that won’t even let him play his Turtlenecks albums, even real low, have drained out of him. “Some dreams do come true,” he added.