Chris Dahlen's Pitchfork Media article about Instant Live was a total Eureka read for me, a mixture of "why didn't I think of that idea?" astonishment and "how could I hate a mega-media conglomerate when they answer my dreams like this?" joyous restraint. The basic premise is this: watch the show, and buy its CD-R "bootleg" on your way out. Clear Channel launched this service in the spring, and hopefully it spreads beyond its home base of Boston (and to Canada?) sooner rather than later. Dahlen's one nagging concern is that owning the live recording might ruin the mystique behind a great show. I think that's a valid concern, but the reward of owning a memorable concert recording far outweighs the (much smaller) risk of discovering that it sucked after all.

I've been down this road before. I own several bootlegs from shows I've attended, and in only one case does the recording not do justice to my good memories. That show is Depeche Mode at Kingswood Music Theatre in June 1994. The audience was completely losing it, partly due to an amplified hysteria effect brought on by packing 10 000 people into an intimate space (for its capacity), and partly because any DM show up to and including that summer '94 tour was the best place in the world to scream like a little girl. DM didn't tour for four years following, and all their fans developed a collective maturity and stopped letting loose at their shows, stopped cheering for Dave Gahan's every tiny mannerism, stopped wearing black clothes and leather bondage gear, etc. Say what you will about Gahan cleaning up, Martin Gore cutting his hair and settling down, Fletch recovering his sanity off the road -- these things are obviously positive steps for the band as people -- but their shows were more fun when they and their fans were all fucked up. That's not a nice thing to say, but people, music is fantasy. Anyhow, the bootleg revealed a band that was trying hard, but didn't have much left in their bodies after a year of touring. Dave's voice was course, brutal, and husky. He sounds sick, and he was. His vices were no secret at the time, but precisely how bad the band was doing didn't become widely known until much later.

The show is sometimes fun to listen to, but remembering it in my mind is a lot more fun, not to mention a more vivid depiction of how enjoyable it actually was. I can't let the disappointment of the recording ruin that for me.