With my Mac in the shop, my bootlegs will have to wait … but I do have a new studio release to listen to, since it came in the mail yesterday:

• Steve Tannen’s Stopped at a Green Light.
  

Last week was pretty meh overall:

• Wilco’s Kicking Television. So, what does the Wilco bootleg fiend think of the Wilco live album? Admittedly, I decided I would judge it by how well-recorded “Misunderstood” was. They nailed it. Four stars—that clearly captures that era of Wilco very well. I think the current shows are even better, now that the current iteration of the band has gotten along better, but still, well-worth owning if you’re not the kind of person who wants to sell their soul to spend their time scouring the Internet to get every last bootleg. [Ummm, hi.]
  
• Son Volt’s Straightaways. Very, very meh. Two stars.
  
• 15 May 1997 [Portland, OR, USA] concert bootleg of Elliott Smith. He needs to pick up the tempo about 20%, but it’s solid and reasonably well-recorded, which is a rarity for that time period. Three stars.
• Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot engineering demos. Phew, the songs got a whole lot better on YHF. Two stars.
• 5 Jun 2006 [Charlotte, NC, USA] concert bootleg of Over the Rhine. Pretty bad, as it’s my second recording ever made. One-and-a-half stars.
  
• 29 Sep 2006 [Knoxville, TN, USA] concert bootleg of the Square Pegs in the Round. Incomplete; didn’t get to listen to this before my Mac had to go into the shop. 27 Apr: I’ll give it two-and-a-half stars. Good performance, but the SBD patch was mixed weirdly.
• 7 Jul 2007 [Hollywood, CA, USA] concert bootleg of Andrew Bird. I’m aware that using the assisted listening device was probably the only non-SBD way to record that show from more than a few rows back, but it wasn’t a good one. Ugh—compressed, flat, mid-heavy, and static-y. One-and-a-half stars.