For the many people who appreciated the live version of Nickel Creek's rendition of George Harrison’s classic TaxMan song that I posted a few months back, I have found the Mother Lode.

Being so far in the boonies, I'm not able to make it in person to many live concerts.  However, many artists are willing to have their performances taped and shared with fans for free.  For the past several months. I have been downloading concerts from the Live Music Archive and playing them through my computer and office surround sound system while I work. 

A few weeks ago, I noticed the search function, which I had previously thought was only for finding bands, and typed in "TaxMan." It came up with 38 hits, many by groups I had never even heard of.  Over the past few days, I have finally been able to download all 38 to my main computer.

The cuts each range from a little over three minutes to almost 16 minutes in length.  Altogether, they total almost four and a half hours if you stack them up and play them back to back, which I am doing right now.

As you can see by the list below, there are several versions by the same groups.  However, that doesn’t mean they sound the same. The reason these groups allow their concerts to be taped and shared is the fact that most of them are of the jam-band ilk, where no two performances are done the same way.  They are the complete opposite from the more famous pop stars of today, who charge their fans huge sums of money to see them lip-synch to their studio recordings while dancing around the stage.  The jam-bands, most famously represented by the Grateful Dead, make each performance completely unique, and thus encourage their fans to capture them for posterity.

As with all of the concerts on the Live Music Archive, some give you a choice of formats to download, including MP3 with the smallest file size, while others only have the much larger SHN format, which music purists claim is of higher quality.  I haven't noticed much difference in quality, so I choose the MP3 when given the chance.  SHN files can be played with the free WinAmp program.

The 38 songs that came up in the search are by:

String Cheese Incident - 13
Steve Kimock - 1
The Green Onions - 1
Moonshine Still - 4
Mutual Admiration Society - 12
Bockman's Euphio - 3
Virginia Coalition - 1
Myoclonic Jerk - 1
Ruder Than You - 1
Go There  - 1 (Instrumental)

These music files are legal to download and use for your own personal non-commercial entertainment.

- posted by Kerry M. Kerstetter, MBA~CPA~ATP~ATA @ 10/30/2005 06:21:00 PM Send this post: