Our DIY Bootleg Album

#317 / Flood Time Capsule: 2006

Everybody's mother always said it (usually with a pretty heavy sigh): If you want something done right, Do It Yourself.

In our case, the truth is that after decades of making music, we just got tired of waiting for someone else to produce a sassy little 1937 Flood bootleg album. So (with a pretty heavy sigh of our own), we decided that if it was going to happen, it was up to us.

The result was Hip Boots: The Flooded Basement Tapes, a collection of nearly two dozen cuts from various drop-in points during the first decades in The Flood’s foggy ruins of time.

In the finest tradition of bootlegs, the recording quality in the album isn’t always the greatest. Field recordings made on the fly at coffeehouses and parties, at clubs and concerts and in people's living rooms, they used whatever equipment was available, from cheap cassette recorders and reel-to-reel machines that were pretty nice for their day to (later still) digital recorders of all stripes.

Setting aside that sometimes-suckiness, the recordings do capture the spirit and spontaneity that brought The 1937 Flood into being in the first place and has kept it going today. Covering the period from 1974 to 2006, the album provides some frothy footnotes for diehard Flood fans.

Today the entire album can be spun for free through our Radio Floodango music streaming service. Click here to give it a listen.

Want More? Check the Bash Films

If those first dozen tracks have you hungry for more tunes from The Flood’s hippy youth, remember than many of those recordings came from tapes made at the memorable music parties that Pamela and Charlie Bowen hosted in their Southside Huntington home starting in the mid-1970s.

The gatherings are commemorated in Tbe Flood’s legacy film series called The Bowen Bashes. Click here to read about that work and to see any of the episodes for free.

Putting It on the Timeline

Finally, if you’re wondering where a particular tune on Hip Boots fits into the band’s long history, consult our ever-growing collection of articles in Flood Watch’s Flood History section. Click here to start your browsing.