"We were wanna be rebels who didn't have a clue, with our Rock n' roll T-shirts and our typically bad attitudes. Had no excuses for the things that we'd done, we were brave, we were crazy, we were mostly young." ~kenny chesney

I love live albums/bootlegs. In case you haven't picked up on that already. They're pretty much all I listen to. Kenny Chesney's new live album, Live Those Songs Again, is great. I've been listening to it a lot lately. My favorite song on it is "Anything but Mine;" it's such a beautiful song. Here's an example of why I love live recordings. During this song, at one point Kenny starts to sing the chorus. He manages to get out, "And in the morning I'm..." and then he stops singing, in the middle of the line, right after "I'm." Because the audience is singing so loudly that he's shocked and lets them sing it alone. So he sings "And in the morning I'm..." and the audience keeps going with, "leaving, making my way back to Cleveland, so tonight I hope I would do just fine." And then Kenny joins in again for, "And I don't see how you could ever be anything but mine." It's such a beautiful moment, because you know he wasn't expecting it. The audience was just feeling the song and they took over. And he stopped singing in the middle of a line and let them. Those moments are fantastic. That's why I love live music; it's so unexpected. Even if you know a song, you can hear so many different versions of it and each time you'll get something new and special out of it.
Counting Crows are, of course, the kings of live music and always will be. No one else can do what they can do live. But I still like listening to other people try. And Kenny Chesney does a decent job on his live record.