Scott McMahan

If you are a Rebecca St. James (RSJ) fan, probably the best music
you've never heard is her performance at Alive 2000. This concert was
done right before "Transform" came out. It has many of her best songs
from "God" and "Pray", plus the then-new "For The Love Of God" with a
different arrangement from "Transform". The band she had at this time
was superb, and the songs are much tighter and more enjoyable than the
album versions. She gives the show everything she's got, too. Of the
various live recordings I've heard over the years, which aren't that
many, it's the best one I've heard. Plus, what's really great is the
recording has RSJ's spoken bits between songs, including encouragement
to live for God, and not compromise with the world. Plus, a long bit
about personal purity is included along with a heart-breaking story.

The House of Blues (where they had this concert) tried an experiment
about that time of streaming live concerts over the Internet. I don't
know what ever happened to that, or if they still do it. But, back
then, someone recorded the stream to disk and made MP3s of the
recording. I will not reveal any details about how this happened. What
surprised me recently was that this recording is still circulating on
file sharing networks! It was released on WinMX about the time Napster
was shut down. Somewhere around that time. And it's still going strong
after all these years, which is remarkable.

I only wonder why the record company for RSJ doesn't get their hands
on this and release it. The recording is of medium quality: Very
listenable, but also a little flat. The original recording would be
phenomenal. Even if the record company had to split the profits with
the HoB, releasing this concert would sell some CDs. I'd pay for a
CD-quality version, myself, and I don't even buy CDs anymore. And the
HoB would not be monetizing this concert in any other way, so why
wouldn't they go for it? Someone at ForeFront needs to jump on
this. This is a guaranteed revenue generator.

In the meanwhile, you can go to BitTorrent sites, and other
file-sharing sites, and track this down fairly easily. Be sure to get
the 320kbps version, because the sound is a little flat (not much
dynamic range) to begin with and more MP3 compression certainly
doesn't help.

BTW: In "I'll Carry You", the act she is introducing is Bedlam
Oz. Hard to hear what she is saying, but she says "Bedlam Oz, or, The
Slinkys". They have a web site if you want to track them down to learn
more. (You probably don't, but I'm just mentioning it...)