I met my first girlfriend in 2001. I think I owned Ten but she was a huge fan. I remember she had the Milan 00 bootleg and I was totally blown away by how this band sounded, how long they played for. She told me that the band had never played the same setlist, which at the time was staggering.
That was the start of my obsession. At the time in England broadband was not really a thing, so downloading shows was out as at home we still had a 28k modem
. But there was a small, independent record store that stocked about 4 of their bootlegs. I was 17 and remember working all summer and going in one day buying them all. They were Verona, Oslo, Jones Beach I and Tampa. I was hooked. Then I bought Touring Band. Spent the next 10 years following them around the world but have always wished I could've seen them on the 2000 tour. As a few other posters mentioned, there's a darkness and moodiness in the playing that is so captivating. And also as someone else mentioned, the band played as if every show might be their last (I guess given the tragedy that year it was a real possibility that it might be) and seemed genuinely grateful to the fans for sticking with them. I also feel like the band really got the balance right with 1 or 2 covers per show, and looking at the setlists there really isn't a bad one.
I now have all the original 2000 bootlegs but some personal favourites:
Cardiff
Tampa (great Immortality, Garden, Porch)
Salzburg
Ljubljana
Lisbon
Glasgow (RVM > Brain of J > Insignificance -
)Pittsburgh
Greensboro (love Of the Girl as an opener)
Toronto
Portland (RVM > Fuckin' Up to close is amazing)
I was also massively into B&Ps at the time. When I went to Uni I started using their LAN to download fan-shot videos of the concerts from a mIRC channel. To this day I've got a crate in the garage full of dvds, Salzburg is a great one. This thread has inspired me to dig through them and see what's in there. If there's interest, I'll share them on here...