First, thanks to all the Phish.netters for all you do. This is a great site for the community.

Secondly, I love reading the recaps and reviews on all sites. I'm lucky enough to attend most shows and love reading about other people's experience at the show.

Thus, this article is very strange to me. It seems that the author is arguing that somehow that copies of the original experience is more genuine than that actual experience. This is surprising to me that anyone who loves improvisational music as much as clearly the author does, would make such an argument. A show is more than the recording. It is the lights, the crowd, the feeling both the people in attendance and the band are feeling. I doubt anyone would argue that the band does not clearly feed off the energy in the room. Sometimes this energy is captured on tape and other times it is not. Thus to make an argument that the authentic experience is somehow less authentic than a video or a recording just does not make sense to me. Now if the author were to claim that it is to difficult to organize reviewers for each show who are in actual attendance than that is fine and I could respect that.

All that being said, I do appreciate the response to this question. While I disagree with the authors view, it is nice to know .nets position on this. I will continue to read .nets reviews but now with a grain of salt.