faulty live versions enhancing songs

Erm... not a "pop" band, but Radiohead's Kid A made a lot more sense after seeing it performed live. It seemed like a bunch of over-hyped pretentious wank the first time I heard it. Lots of half-finished jams, ill thought out soundscapes and scraps of songs thrown together.

Then when I heard it performed live, it really did turn into fully- thought-out jams, interesting soundscapes and montages of song- scraps. It made a lot more sense to me as live jams than it did as cod-post-techno.

On LIVE SEEDS, Nick Cave's renditions of "Papa Won't Leave You Henry" and "Jack the Ripper" completely improve upon the studio versions, if only because he's much more full of bile onstage.

I was at Frank's once and the sound went out, but everybody kept dancing, and then everybody was clapping to keep the beat, and a tambourine came out, and the congas were attended to, and some girl starts going "we don't need no music... we don't need no music..." and everybody's like dancing twice as hard as they were before, like to PROVE it, and finally the DJ got it together and managed to bring in his track in time with us!!!! It was an amazing public music moment.

That's a great story.