AXXIS DVD Promo presse text Fotos

On June 3rd, the North Rhine-Westphalian rock band AXXIS will release an "official Bootleg-DVD"- in an previously unprecedented way.

It’s going to be a three-hour recording filmed by fans on the "20 years AXXIS" Anniversary Show in Bochum, in which the band themselves took over the administration for the final bootleg and which will now be released via their own label Phonotraxx Publishing (in distribution of Soulfood Music), having been found these days especially for this cause.

Never before a bootleg was planned, produced and published on their own label by a band themselves. Even the cover artwork of the DVD was designed by vocalist Bernhard Weiss himself.

With this step, AXXIS react unusual and very creative on the serious changes in the music industry. They take a bootleg, and thus precisely the product being previously opposed by labels, as a headstone to start up an own label.

In the still flourishing music industry of the 80s, bootlegs were seen as a disagreeable and unstoppable evil and sensed by the industry as a true Beelzebub. It was said that bootlegs, mostly illegally recorded by fans, were at fault for less CD sales as actually possible.

But especially fans of the rock scene loved bootlegs. For them those recordings were an important form of expression to really “live” the scene and to create preferably authentic and pristine contemporary documents of “their” bands.

“We are music fans ourselves and bootlegs were part of our life as well.” said AXXIS vocalist Bernhard Weiss. “Bootlegs are often beautiful snapshots, as they don’t fudge anything and you can experience concerts which you’d like to keep in memory just as they have happened. Nothing is reworked in the studio, as it is normal for official live releases.

And you have to take into account, that there were bands like Metallica, who got famous with the help of bootlegs.”

In the modern music industry, they can just tiredly smile about the by bootleg alleged loss in sales. Long ago a new era began, which is dominated by illegal downloads and where physical media has completely lost on significance. Considering this fact, one would almost nostalgic wish back the bootleg era, where music still had a tangible value.

With the release of the "20 Years of AXXIS - The Official Bootleg"-DVD, AXXIS want to react to the changed situation. On the June 3rd, they will, as the first band in the history of music, release a bootleg, which they cutted and supplied with subtitles themselves and even release it on their on label. This undertaking is not a neatly designed marketing strategy, but in the end just a pure coincidence:

In the best bootleg tradition a longtime fan asks the band, if he might record the show of the 20-years on stage anniversary on 13 December 2009 in Bochum . AXXIS enjoys the recording and thinks about offering copies of it on their website for other fans. As the interest in the recording is by far larger than expected, it gets obvious, that an official pressing will be needed.

“Then we decided that at this opportunity we could also achieve our long-cherished wish of an own label”, said Weiss. “The DVD is a test-balloon to find out if this business model, in the face of the continuously stagnating industry, is profitable.”

„20 Years Of AXXIS – The Official Bootleg“ was edited, mastered and self produced in their own Soundworxx studios and will be released as DVD/CD Set, respectively as a double CD-, or double DVD-Set. “With the mission to make a regular live album, we would have surely acted differently, but the idea of a bootleg appealed to us immensely. AXXIS have always been a band that is known for their spontaneous live flair. Often fans even told us, that they liked our concerts always a bit better than our albums. The concerts just live on the spontaneity.”

On the first official AXXIS bootleg you can still hear wrong notes as well as Bernhard Weiss' famous extravagant stage announcements. In elaborate detail work in the last few months, the band has even done the effort to translate Weiss' legendary performance and speeches and supply them with English, Spanish and French subtitles. On June 3rd there will be therefore not only an unprecedented, but also exceedingly honest, unmistakable and AXXIS-typical "Official Bootleg".

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