"The Rarities" was produced in Japan in 1991. I believe this to be the
only factory-pressed Ventures bootleg. There are other bootlegs of the
Ventures but they are produced on home-made CD-R's, DVD-R's, cassettes
or on other home recording formats that are traded through fan networks
and/or sold on Ebay. "The Rarities" could almost be considered a
"pirate" recording as it consisted of commercially released recordings
of the Ventures and Marksmen (Nokie's side project of the early '60's).
But the bulk of the recordings were so long out of print and scarce to
all but the most dedicated of collectors, that it rose above the
"pirate" status. The sound quality was good but all tracks were
transfers from vinyl. Many of the tracks have since been released from
master tapes on the ACE records "Ventures In the Vaults" series making
this bootleg for the most part obsolete.
