[Jeff Higgins]

You guys have simply been going to see the wrong bands. I can think of plenty of bands that I saw while in junior high, high school, and college that were actually better live than they were on their records. Granted, most were not "pop" bands with strings of Top 40 hits, and were thereby not as commercially successful and well known.

I got really tired, however, of going to see the popular bands of the day and not even being able to recognize what they were playing. It didn't take long for me to discern, even by listening to their albums, who had the real talent and who was simply over-produced with multiple takes mixed to get the song to sound good on the album. I just started avoiding their concerts, and was afterwards rarely disappointed with who I chose to go see.

Interestingly, too, is that those bands never really did spawn these "cover bands". Maybe because, in part, their music was not as popular, but I think to the largest degree because of the level of talent required to play their stuff.