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An hour before Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood take the stage at Madison Square Garden in February, Mike Barnard (not his real name) is examining the security guards outside the arena. Many look carefully inside people's bags and pat the fans down, but an older female guard seems distracted. Engaged in a conversation with a co-worker, she's hardly looking at the throngs pouring past her. Barnard quickly makes his move. She barely glances inside his book bag as he calmly passes through the turnstile. The only thing inside the bag is a black cap, but a careful pat-down would have revealed $5,700 worth of recording equipment concealed under his armpit.
Taping has come a long way since the days when the infamous 1969 Rolling Stones LP LIVEr Than You'll Ever Be hit shelves. Barnard's digital boots sound as clear and pristine as a soundboard recording. Inside, Barnard heads to the bathroom. Six minutes later, he emerges from a stall wearing the cap and walking stiffly. Once in his seat, he kneels down and takes two wires from inside his pants leg and plugs them into a Sound Devices 722 digital hard-drive recorder that's now in his bag. Hidden inside the cap are two tiny DPA 4021 microphones. Two and a half hours later, he has a near-perfect tape, marred only by two guys talking nonstop during "Georgia on My Mind." "If you try and shush people, that will backfire," he says. "They might go to security, so it's best to be discreet."
Barnard, a successful attorney in his midfifties, has never made any money from the 400 or so concerts he's taped in the last fifteen years. He posts them for free on BitTorrent sites like Traders Den and Dimeadozen. Barnard specializes in rock warhorses like Bob Dylan and Van Morrison, but in the past few years he's applied his skills to indie acts like the Arcade Fire and Wilco. His recordings are so pristine that some eventually wind up as bootlegs in record stores. Dylan himself even bootlegged Barnard, says the taper; three tracks he taped at a 2000 show in Portsmouth, England, ended up on the Japan-only release Live: 1961-2000. (Dylan's label could not confirm this.)
Barnard's success has nothing to do with luck. He has memorized the exact seats that have the choicest sound at every New York venue. "Thirteen rows back, dead center on the aisle in between sections 3 and 4, is the best for Madison Square Garden," he says. "The best spot at the Bowery Ballroom is on the floor, eight to ten slabs of people back. You want it at an angle, sort of like a V, with the speaker stands on both sides of you."
He never drinks during concerts, and he's usually too nervous beforehand to eat. "A dose of anxiety is a good thing," he says. "It will keep you from doing stupid things, and it keeps your guard up."