The Grateful Dead was known for not only letting their fans record live shows, but encouraging them to, as long as they weren’t sold for profit later on. I had thought the “taping culture” had pretty much died off, with only a few bands encouraging it these days (Dave Matthews, Black Crowes, etc.), but last night I went to a show where probably 10% of the audience was taping, most of them at a special “tapers table” where they hooked their fancy ADATs, Minidisc recorders, etc. directly into the main mixing board. I was planning on taping the show with my Nomad with a new microphone I had just bought, but the various tapers were nice enough to lend me a cable and let me daisy chain through their recording devices. The end result: an incredibly good sounding recording of the show (one set of straight reggae and dub and one set of the reggae version of Dark Side of the Moon).
If I could, I’d tape every show I attended. There’s often something special about live performances, and being able to have them archived is pretty cool. I wouldn’t care so much about performances I wasn’t at (ie. trading) in most cases, but I can think of at least three shows in the last five years that I really wish I had a quality recording of.
Posted in Television, Movies, and Music