Back when I was young — so you know we’re talking geological eons of time ago — there was a US bootleg company called “Trade Mark of Quality” whose product was (certainly, for the time) of almost professional levels of sound veracity and sheer gloriousness. Top quality vinyl to the max. And some banging covers to boot. The Stones, Zep, Dylan, the Dead etc. etc. all got their music bootlegged and out to the slavering masses waiting for anything they could get their hands on from their band (or bands) of choice.
The TMQ team were rumoured to be not unwilling to bung the band’s sound crew a suitably tempting bunch of notes to get direct access to the sound board, to then plug in their tape-deck. So much so, that the notoriously tight-wad Mr Stingy a.k.a. Mick Jagger, fearing a major loss of income for him and Prince Rupert and the rest of the Stones’ team, hurriedly prevailed on their record company at the time, Decca, to get their own, official live album version out, thus “Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!” hit the streets in 1970.
![Some of the performances, as well as one of the two photography sessions for the album cover featuring Charlie Watts and a donkey, are depicted in the documentary film Gimme Shelter, and shows Watts and Mick Jagger on a section of the M6 motorway adjacent to Bescot Rail Depot in Birmingham, England, posing with a donkey. This is adjacent to where the RAC building now stands.[5] The cover photo, however, was taken in early February 1970 in London, and does not originate from the 1969 session. The photo by David Bailey, featuring Watts with guitars and bass drums hanging from the neck of a donkey, was inspired by a line in Bob Dylan's song "Visions of Johanna": "Jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule" (though, as mentioned, the animal in the photo is a donkey, not a mule). The band would later say "we originally wanted an elephant but settled for a donkey"](https://mlxbgx65c0w3.i.optimole.com/cb:0_th.2cc31/w:1024/h:1024/q:mauto/f:best/https://salutethepig.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/get-yer-ya-ya-s-out-rolling-stones-in-concert-expanded-edition.jpg)
Fun times; getting hold of one of the TMQ records involved much subterfuge; either involving a postal order being sent off to some PO Box detailed in an ad taken from the back pages of the N.M.E. or else being lucky enough to know someone who ran a record shop and who was prepared to run the (very real) risk of being busted by Trading Standards officers if they chose to stock such criminal items. Luckily, my mate David did. Thanks for all the albums, Dave!
And to drag this short piece back to something vaguely pork related, I’d actually forgotten until just now, that there was a pig in their logo, smoking a stoogie. Happy trails kids.
