@TheLizard said:

I can't tell you how many times I have left a show with me and many of the other show goes feeling that the show was absolutely stellar, only to read a review back at the hotel that the show had been lack-luster or just average.

But this only becomes a problem, IMO, if you take what the reviewer says about the "show" being average to mean that the experience must have been average, or that having the time of your life at that show is dumb because the music was average. Maybe the recaps come across that way sometimes; maybe all reviews need to state clearly up top that whether or not the reviewer is talking about the live experience or the recorded music.

I don't think there is anything wrong with reviewing just the recorded music. For that matter, there's nothing wrong with reviewing the concert experience. Both have value, and you can enjoy one and not the other. Two examples from my experience:

A friend of mine took off on a whim and drove from Des Moines to Dayton for the 11-30-95 show. At the time, he didn't enjoy it. He thought it was a poor show, that the band sounded off. When he finally got the tape in early '96, he was blown away by it and insisted on spinning it for me right away.

Earlier this summer, I had the best Phish concert experience of my life at Portsmouth2. I thought it was a perfect show, and that the Divided Sky was truly an amazing moment in Phish history. Listening to the show over the next few days, I was surprised to discover it was possibly above average, but not that far above.

So, in either case, a review of the show and a review of the music might be quite different, and both are valid and have their place. But since most of us actually weren't there, and can never be, it makes a lot of sense to spend more time on reviews of the recorded music, with reviews of the experience sprinkled in when possible. Plus, people can give their take on the concert experience in the comments of the blog, as well as on the reviews linked to the setlist.

The bottom line is that saying a "show" is average doesn't mean that the live experience must also have been average.

::goes to refill bag of hot air::