we live in a weird time now, where whenever we see or hear something incredible, even in a singular experience like a live event, there is an expectation that someone was there to capture that and put it on the internet. even if we weren’t personally equipped or fast enough to capture it ourselves, the assumption is that someone was, and if we do enough google searches, we’ll be able to track down proof of that amazing moment and relive it as often we want, or show the evidence to everyone that missed it of how enviable our experience was.

i can think of several times where this held true, and i was able to share moments of incredible live music shows. for example, the encore of daft punk’s alive tour where they lit up like tron figures. i was able to find a totally decent recording of the whole show shortly after the decemberists played at the hollywood bowl accompanied by the LA philharmonic (which is still floating around if you try hard). the mountain goats tour where john got sick and had the whole audience sing ‘no children’ for him instead was one of those magical moments you want to revisit every once in a while to remember that people are inherently good (even if by proxy, as this was recorded in san fran and not LA). the internet is amazing for this reason.

but then every once in a while, you turn to the internet to prove those cool moments really happened, and it lets you down. it took me weeks to find a clip of a colin meloy solo b-side i’d heard at a live show, and i started to wonder if my memory was even right about loving this song so much (though i did find it eventually). there are cover songs or funny moments or removing of clothes (ah, kaki king) that are only around in memory form, which isn’t bad, but a lot harder to effectively convey to someone else who missed it.

which is why i’m so excited that even though their album isn’t coming out until next year, and the one particular new song i loved from their recent live show was nowhere to be found for a fairly long time, frightened rabbit stopped by the bbc to record a couple of their new songs. the one i particularly enjoyed was called ‘nothing like you‘, and prefixmag.com provided the mp3, and now i can happily throw it on repeat and wait anxiously for the album to arrive. [contented sigh]… thanks, internet.