Listeningblog: the Chemical Brothers @ Leicester '95

I've been a live bootleg addict ever since the T-3 lines of UC Santa Cruz allowed me to obtain the illicitly recorded and circulated, but oh-so-delicious live recordings of my favorite artists. My tastes for illicit recordings mirrored my tastes for legal ones, so I amassed quite a large collection of bootlegs of electronic dance music artists, Underworld and the Chemical Brothers being my foremost pursuits. I just recently obtained, to my delight, a Chemical Brothers performance from 1995 - the second of only two extant such recordings that I know of. I am blogging this as I listen to it for the first time.

I must say, goddamn! Tom Rowlands and Ed Simmons know how to make some funky music. The set opens with massive, psychedelic, analog-synth noodling, slowly seaguing into a look of the old Beatles' sample, "Take this brother, may it serve you well," from the original version of "Chemical Beats" (damn Apple for not clearing that, or any other Beatles samples post-Paul's Boutique). Then it gets started right quick and funky with "Dust Up Beats (Version 2)." Sweet deliciousness. Crunky, funky, massive breaks... There's just a warmth to the Chems' sound, especially in the early stuff - something about the synths and boards they were using. More follows... A bit of the "Bug Powder Dust" break, then on into Leave Home, followed by the immortalized '95 treatment of "Song to the Siren," then the acid madness of "Birdies," which slowly morphs into the "Sandals" remix, followed by the under-appreciated "Life is Sweet (Remix 1)" and "Chemical Beats," and, as always, an Octave Kitten freak-out outro. Confused? Sorry, I got excited. Chems bootlegs do that to me...

My love affair with the Chems is undying and incomparable. Their franken-music opened my mind and world. When I first heard it, it seemed to me the perfect music for me. It was as if it was drawn right from my head. It was as if someone had taken all the elements I liked - Beatles-esque psychedelia, hip-hop, that weird "techno" stuff that I was vaguely aware of, and the outright weirdness of experimental music - and merged it together in one utterly beautiful, mind-fucking package. My love grew unimaginably when I first saw the Chems live at Red Rocks in the summer of '99 - I count the encore of that set as, most likely, the high point of my life. Fucking religious, that was. Shimmering lights, infinite sky, cascading colors and images like the mind of God opening up for me, a sheer wall of maddening, psychedelic sound, and thousands of people sharing the experience with me, lifting their arms up in worship. As the show closed, the words "LOVE IS ALL" were projected on the natural rock of the amphitheater. It still chills me... Listening to live bootlegs such as this one help me to relive that moment. For that reason, they are precious to me.


On another note, it seems like Leicester University was quite the place to be in 1995. I've heard a recording of a magnificent three hour Underworld performance at Leicester during that year. If only I wasn't a clueless adolescent at that point...