IT doesn't tell you on the glib sleevenotes - where the track listing wrongly names Half Way To Crazy as Half Way Crazy - but the Jesus And Mary Chain recording at Sheffield Arena was the concert event of 1992.

The March 28 gig was part of the Rollercoaster tour, when JAMC headlined over Blur, Dinosaur Jr and My Bloody Valentine. That reckless night was a noise contest, and while MBV did most damage to the ears, the five-piece Mary Chain were at their grimiest, the subversive Reid brothers augmented by a greasy, stomping rhythm section of Matthew Parkin and Barry Blackler who sounded like they had won the chance to play with the JAMC in a bikers' convention prize draw.

William Reid was still fixated on feedback and distortion, but there was always total control in the incendiary battle with sound technology. By 1995, and the second of their concerts for the Beeb, this time at Trinity Bristol, the grumpy JAMC were losing it. William in particular was erratic, by now singing I Hate Rock'n'Roll and meaning it. Elsewhere, Jim Reid's vocals sound shot and cynical, the fire burnt out, the Chain broken.

Whereas the Reids declined slowly, inexorably, amid their rock'n'roll excess, David Gedge has grown anew since jettisoning The Wedding Present, his meat-and-potatoes answer to The Smiths. The Leeds diarist of love's vicissitudes has become ever more cinematic and wide-screen in Cinerema's candid ballads. With melancholic strings attached, these relaxed live recordings and session tracks - made exclusively for his old chum John Peel's late-night Radio One show - are honest and earthy, yet French-smart and cosmopolitan too. Better still, they are the earliest renditions of these songs - Your Charms was written expressly to Peel's order - and that makes the kitchen-sink dramas all the more real.

Updated: 10:57 Thursday, June 19, 2003