Next month sees Orange Country Regional History Center’s wildly popular Figurehead exhibition finally winding down after a nearly two-year run. The retrospective traced the wild and oft-unbelievable history of wild-card local concert promoter Figurehead through the years 1985 to 2001, using all manner of priceless alt-rock ephemera from head Figure Jim Faherty’s archives. (And more than a few photos from OW‘s own Jim Leatherman.)
Just as engaging has been the offshoot programming around this exhibition, taking in everything from Israel Vasquetelle talking about Orlando hip-hop to Lure Design doing a live-screenprinting demo to — this Thursday — the strange but true story of Orlando music public-access show Bootleg TV. This live-music clip show, helmed and filmed by filmmaker Dave Segal, actually made it onto Orlando airwaves from 1998-2006, beaming an extraordinary range of local concert clips fearlessly captured by Segal into homes all over the City Beautiful.
Though these days the television part of Bootleg TV is no more, Segal will be in town this week to tell his story with plenty of video from his roughly 4,000 tapes in tow.
“It’ll be a little bit of history on the music and the music scene in Orlando and the venues. And then from there, it’s just going to go everywhere and anywhere,” says Segal. “Because of what I started back then, that’s taken me all over the world shooting bands.”
For Segal, it all started when the music bug bit him as a kid after his parents took him to see Peter Frampton in full Comes Alive flight. Endless hours spent planted in front of the television watching an embryonic MTV provided him with the epiphany that this was what he wanted to do with his life — shoot music videos and maybe even work at MTV.
By the early 1990s, Segal was enrolled in Valencia’s film program and found himself increasingly surrounded by musicians — friends, roommates, drinking buddies — and enthralled with Orlando nightlife — Skinny’s, Go Lounge and what was then known as Sapphire Supper Club.
“Being a huge music lover, I was drawn to downtown Orlando, [especially] the Downtown Jazz Blues Club, which later became the Sapphire, and then later became the Social,” says Segal. “I started going to shows down there, and I had to work there, because I was so drawn to it. … I was waiting tables there while I was in Valencia.”
Surrounded by all of this creativity, Segal did the logical thing: grabbed his camera and started shooting. “The combination of all these things led me to grabbing a camera, and I first started out shooting my friends’ bands. From that point on, I started shooting everything. It became an obsession-slash-ultimate passion,” says Segal. “Part of that was I was seeing music that I felt was just as good as, if not better than, a lot of the music that was on the radio. And I wanted to be part of a catalyst to hopefully forward that music to others. And my avenue was television.”
How would an intrepid concert documentarian end up on the television airwaves? A little — and much-missed — phenomenon called public access.
“During the time I was in school and shooting all these bands, I was freelancing as a cameraman, and one of the people that I was freelancing for had several shows on Time Warner cable,” says Segal. “He inspired me to start my own show, because I had hundreds and hundreds of [concerts] shot. He said, ‘What are you going to do with all this one day? … Why don’t you do a show?'”
Segal scrambled to put together a 30-minute sample episode and took it to Time Warner for consideration to air on one of their public access stations. Things snowballed from there.
“I quickly got a few sponsors. Will Walker was the first. And with that, I hit the ground running. It became my job. I was out shooting, sometimes several nights out of the week, just running from place to place,” remembers Segal. “At the time, we had some very cool avant-garde clubs downtown. With these venues, it was just great being there. And it was even more great for me having a camera in my hand, because I would just watch this, and wish somebody else saw what I was seeing, because it’s so good.”
From that initial inspiration and greenlight, Bootleg TV would come to vivid life weekly on local cable television. Launching first with sets from local bands — think Gargamel!, Bughead — soon enough Segal was shooting big names and future legends in their fiery prime rampaging across gritty Orlando stages. To name just a few: Sonic Youth, Sam Rivers, Guided by Voices, Fugazi, J. Mascis and Mike Watt, among countless others.
Like many in the alternative-rock world of the 1990s, Segal was looking to make the jump to a major — network, not record label. He came close to a deal with Fox, but it fell through at the last minute.
Though crestfallen, Segal soon hit the streets running again. The shows were getting bigger and the pace of life more frenetic.
“Bootleg TV on terrestrial television ran from 1998 all the way through 2006. Now, during the time, I had different people popping in and out to help me at times, but most of the time, it was just me,” says Segal. “Sometimes I’d show up to a show like at Will’s, and I would not only be the cameraman for this show, I would also shoot a wide shot on a tripod. … I’d have to hang the stage lights — because nobody had them — literally just minutes before the band [started] or sometimes when the band had already gone on. I hit record, and I did what I did, and I got what I got. I kind of created a method to tell the story with one person.”
After eight years, something had to give. Segal needed a break.
“It just got to the point where I literally was going 24 hours a day. If I wasn’t producing commercials, I was selling ads. If I wasn’t selling ads, I was shooting shows. If I wasn’t shooting the show, I was editing. And on top of that, I had a deadline with the TV station every week.”
Bootleg TV, the show, might be on indefinite hiatus, but Segal still shoots bands — though at a much more relaxed and choosy pace. A YouTube channel provides tantalizing glimpses of what once was and might have been.
But on Thursday at the History Center, it’ll be “lights, camera, action” again. This is an unmissable proposition for those into underground kicks or Orlando’s weird, hidden history.
Subscribe to Orlando Weekly newsletters.
Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | or sign up for our RSS Feed
Related Stories
This article appears in Jan 15-21, 2025.