On Medeski, Martin and Wood

*Tangential Rant*

I just downloaded a fantastic Medeski, Martin, and Wood set that was one of the highlights of my experience attending the Bonnaroo festival in 2006. It's been a long time since I've paid for a live set, and it was well worth it. I wanted to put up a new post (long overdue) about the trio, but in looking for a show I discovered that they've declined participation on archive.org. That's really too bad. To be fair, they do allow taping and some of their shows are available on etree.org. The problem that I have with this is that etree is, well, kind of a pain in the ass to navigate and use if you don't know what you're doing. A primary mission of our work on TheJiveFather is to expose people to the joys of live recording who might not otherwise have the inclination or know-how to use some of the traditionally available methods of finding shows. We spend our time searching and scouring precisely so that you don't always have to, and archive.org has proven time and again to be the simplest place to point someone who just wants to enjoy a show without taking a course in file conversions or Bit Torrent optimization. The band's opt-out describes their reasoning as wanting the sharing process to transpire entirely between fans. Huh? Maybe I'm missing something, but a circle jerk amongst the already converted will help your group increase the fan base how, exactly? I'm a big fan of the band and I am willing to shell out $14 (waaaaay too expensive, by the way) for a FLAC copy of a great set of sentimental value to me, but what am I to use to turn new people on to your live music?

For shame...Anyway, on to our scheduled programming!