Chris Clark is dead on: live records are a way for bands to make great money that they’re so not taking hold of these days.

I write this as I’ve spent a lot of time the last couple of days listening a bootleg of a great show that my buddy Derek Webb did back in November of last year. They’re making a DVD of it, as he and I discussed, and it’s gonna be pretty sweet.

But since I was at this show, I have lots of remembrances of it. Chief among them are two points:

1. When Derek is introducing the band, he introduces his road manager, David Jacquin. If you listen to the bootleg right after he says Dave’s name, I scream “Yeah DAVEJAC!” It’s pretty fun to hear yourself. [I know a couple other spots where I can clearly hear myself yelling, but that's the one that totally stands out.]
2. When Derek introduces “Can’t Lose You” and says that this is “for my single brothers”, he looked over in my direction. Now, he could have been looking at any number of people, but I like to think that he was looking at me.

But it’s like Chris said:

… one album from one artist keeps floating to the top whenever I look for an absolute favorite: Sarah McLachlan, Live from the Perth Concert Hall. It’s a bootleg of the concert I went to last year. Not a particularly great recording, but what makes it special is that I was there for it. I lived it. The between-song banter, the atmosphere, the pure joy in the voices of the crowd as they sing along to Ice Cream at the end of the show — it’s locked in my memory, and listening to the show puts a smile on my face all the same.

[Emphasis mine.]

In the same way, I have a bootleg of a Caedmon’s show on DV [yes, Rick, I know] that I recorded. The couple of times I’ve watched it, it’s been pretty fun, because I was there.

Despite the fact that I’ve been to a number of Derek’s shows over the last couple of years, I’m still drawn to bootlegs of shows I’ve actually been to for this very reason. And I know that people on The Rumor Forum love bootlegs, especially stuff shared on Ragamuffin, the lovely community bootleg-trading resource.

But just as iTunes and its clones have stemmed the tide of music piracy, official live releases would rock. Lost and Found—admittedly a niche band, as you typically see them at Christian youth event rallies—has been selling recordings of shows for some time now. As Chris Clark notes, Pearl Jam is notable about doing this with their fans, and for good reason:

A record like this, despite its poor quality and dubious legality, is the only thing that can make a deep and lasting connection with a cynical music lover. Pearl Jam knows this, they’ve been releasing ‘official bootlegs’ of their shows for years and are enjoying great rewards from it. It makes them money (buckets of it: since it’s impossible to make good money on a studio album, bands earn their real living on tour selling tickets and the associated merchandise) and it brings their core fans even closer to them. It’s not a “Live CD” of some show in Podunk they never saw, it’s a memory distilled, and it can turn someone who wasn’t previously a real big fan into a devotee.

The money aspect is important: if you have a good board feed, these are easy to produce. [I know; I've done it on my own with a show DaveJac helped me record a couple years ago. Of course, I wasn't selling that boot; I gave it away, with Derek's permission.] The sales for these aren’t going to be huge for any one show, but if 10% of the attendees at each show buy one … that’s not small potatoes. It’s a way to tap into the Long Tail.

I keep thinking that I have to point this to my musician friends … so I’ll hit post and then start emailing it to them.