Live At The Majestic Theatre, San Antonio, TX (2002)

Here comes another bootleg from the much loved “Gutterflower” era. This release brings both joy and sadness. Let’s find out why.

On December 4th, 2002, the Goo Goo Dolls performed at the Majestic Theatre in San Antonio, Texas. This was indeed a very nice concert which boosted a total of 21 songs, taken mostly from their then-newest release “Gutterflower” and from the previous breakthrough album, “Dizzy Up The Girl”. The show was also one of the first concerts where the band began regularly playing the famous Tom Petty cover “American Girl“, which had also become an official single just recently.

This is a joyful event, and it shows the band performing at the best of their potential. Simultaneously, it is a pretty saddening release. Why? Well, because of the following:

  • The quality of the recording is extremely low. I am ashamed for it myself, even though I had nothing to do with it (besides sharing it). Whoever recorded it was likely pretty far from the main stage, and possibly armed with a not-so-great device. Sounds and instrumentation are not very clear and polished, to say the least.
  • On top of that, whoever digitized the files had likely zero knowledge about the whole encoding enterprise. As a result, we get .mp3 files encoded at 96kbps, at a frequency of 32khz. Just to give you an idea, 44khz is the standard for audio frequency, and 192kbps is considered the minimum amount of bitrates for decent results. In some cases, especially at the beginning of the mp3 revolution, 128kbps had become the standard, but it was not that good due to the amount of cutoffs it performed on the song’s waveform. Hence, the switch to 192kbps first, and then to 320kbps later, in our modern times. The dude who encoded this went even lower than 128kbps. I am already picturing in my heard audiophiles tearing their hair out with their bare hands as they are reading this…

It’s truly a shame, given the fact that these shows are quite rare to find. It’s sad to get your hands on one of them, and then realize what a poor bootlegging job has been done. At least, in this occasion, we get a nice stripper story to cheer us up. Also, please notice that the first few seconds of the opener have been cut out. This was not done by me.

Well, like I said in the past… This is what I have, this is what I can share.

You can listen to the concert below. Download links are available at the end of this post.

TRACK LISTING:

  1. Naked
  2. Long Way Down
  3. Slide
  4. Big Machine
  5. You Never Know
  6. Tucked Away
  7. Black Balloon
  8. Dizzy
  9. Here Is Gone
  10. Truth Is A Whisper
  11. Stripper Story
  12. Think About Me
  13. Lucky Star
  14. Smash
  15. Name
  16. All Eyes On Me
  17. Broadway
  18. Sympathy
  19. Iris
  20. What A Scene
  21. January Friend
  22. American Girl

DOWNLOAD (Main Source)

DOWNLOAD (Mirror 1)

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