Before I continue: I want to make it clear that I make it an issue to get consent from the artist prior to recording!!!! I'm not encouraging folks to illegally tape a show. Please have common courtesy for the hard work and effort of the artist! Remember that listening to bootlegs and sharing good vibes via word of mouth is only one form of support. Buy the artists' album. Go and see him/her perform live. I guarantee you that a live performance cannot be replicated.
In addition: I am a beginner to this whole audio recording business and I am providing my experiences merely as a reference. There are plenty of sites available that provide extremely detailed information about DIY Audio Recordings. But as a novice recorder, I am keeping to the KISS guideline: that's Keep It Simple, Stupid. My main goal is to get a decent quality recording. However, I am also anal and quality conscious which means that I want something good quality wise to work with from the start. So keeping things simple is sometimes not an option. Either way, I'm learning as I go.
I know there's a lot of sites available that address the issue of how to tape a live performance. But the majority of the sites that I've come across are written from a male point of view. Since I am not a man, I cannot write from that perspective. So I'm adding a woman's perspective to the information that is already available.