The Blasters Bring It Back Alive

Records can be great, but hearing a great live performance is still, for me, the essence of music. Vinyl is only the documentation of a series of events, critically removed. It is difficult to experience those ephemeral live moments in a club or hall, since the music is created and disappears into a sort of organic paradox, timeless and time bound, gone before it can be fully apprehended by the mind or ear, but supremely understood in the soul. Music, in that regard, is a straight path to your feelings, which is why that unmediated experience can provide the thrill, the "rush" that very few records can approach. If we allow the video-technology age to push us further from the clubs into our "home entertainment" modules, we'll be losing the fundamental act that makes music live, we'll be trading the thing itself for the shadow.