The Greatest Ever Live Album
Posted by UNCLEWHEATY on 14 August 2008 - 6:18pm.
I've just read the Word review of the first three re-issued U2 albums and was prompted to go and dig out "Under A Blood Red Sky" which I recall fondly from my student days....it still stands up as a classic live album.
So here are my top 5 live albums:
1. UFO - Strangers In The Night
2. U2 - Under A Blood Red Sky
3. Blue Oyster Cult - Some Enchanted Evening
4. Cheap Trick - Live at Budokan
5. MSG - Live at Budokan
I am sure I have missed out many others!
Let me know.
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1. Live at Leeds - The Who
2....nope that's all I can think of.
Yes I had forgoten about
Yes I had forgoten about that one! I prefer the original version to the re-issued remastered version.
No1
in a field of one. Everything else just pales. Although I think you have to go with the original vinyl version. Subsequent expanded releases actually detract from the power of the original. And there are lots of other live albums I am very fond of.
I also wonder why so few artists don't legitimise bootlegs that are so superior to their official live offerings. Graham Parker did it with a Live In Japan boot. Can't think of anyone else who has done that.
Running On Empty
Jackson Browne
Me First and the Gimme Gimmes Ruin Jonny's Bar Mitzvah
Me First and the Gimme Gimmes are a punk supergroup who moonlight in a covers band.
Outside of this band I can't claim to know the work of any of the members (I don't even know what their real gigs are)
Anyway, this group fronted to a Bar Mitzvah and played supercharged versions of songs like Stairway to Heaven, Strawberry Fields Forever, Heart of Glass.
This may be no-ones idea of a classic album but I love it.
You can hear people yelling out "Get off!" You gotta feel sorry for poor Jonny and his family. On one of the most significant days of a young man's life they were bombarded by this NOISE.It sounds genuine, I have no doubt it's exactly what the title suggests.
I defy anyone to come up with another professionally recorded live album that has stage announcements like "The ice cream bar is open."
Of course they finish with a punked up version of Hava Negila.
They have string of cds and if you like unusual cover versions you should check them out. They are a comedy act and it's a one note joke but at least it's a good joke.
Classic Rock reviewed it, and they thought it was excellent.
I might have to look this up on Amazon.
It looks like quite an event
It's a concept album
and probably the worst place to start for people who aren't already fans and therefore "in on it."
The "concept" is these insensitive arseholes (they sound drunk)play in the most inappropriate style you can imagine for such a spiritual occasion. They argue amongst themselves, they start songs and lose interest halfway through.
It's the idea behind it that's funny not anything that's on the disc. Although I do like some of the stage banter, "This is a good turnout the last Bar Mitzvah we played at the kid couldn't draw flies."
Any of their other albums would make a better place to start. Any of them, they're all the same. That doesn't mean they're not great though if you like cover songs.
I don't think there has ever been
a great live album. They never do a gig justice. Can't think of one that I go back to. I don't buy them any more and they seem to be given away as an extra cd rather too often to suggest real quality.
Exceptions to the "No Good Live Album" rule...
... do exist. Admittedly, the sound isn't going to be better, and the technical performance isn't going to be as good as a studio album, but they can be the best way to get a feel for the way you never can from studio albums.
As a perfect example, I offer:
She never made a live album, but live tracks of Janis Joplin, such as Ball & Chain demonstrate that her fantastic delivery was for real and spontaneous.
I've just realised I'm talking balls
one of my favourite downloads from emusic this year is the live James Taylor album. Hangs head in shame whilst mumbling something about exceptions proving rules......
I didn't want to put it that bluntly
:-)
You have to...
...have Nirvana doing MTV Unplugged in there, don't you?
Seconds Out
by Genesis? How the West Was Won by Led Zep is pretty good too.
If You Want Blood You've Got It...
by AC/DC. Nuff said...
Entire crowd: "Angus! Angus! Angus!"
Angus: "Der der der der der der DUH!"
etc etc
It's Too Late To Stop Now
is surely regarded as the definitive live album, no?
But also:
As Patrick says "If You Want Blood" - pretty good cover too.
The Stones' 'Get Yer Ya Ya's Out'
Dylan's much maligned 'Hard Rain' is a personal favourite - you can hear the venom in his delivery.
And The Band's 'The Last Waltz' contains 'Helpless', 'It Makes No Difference' and 'Caravan' which are certainly in my top 10 recorded live tracks so it must be a contender?
Ya Yas is great alright
if only for the between songs banter like 'my trousahs fallin' dahhn' and 'Charlies good tonight, inneee'
The Band's Rock of Ages
My greatest ever live album - I rate it higher than The Last Waltz.
Not the Greatest but great...........
Springsteen - Live in New York & Seeger
Tom Waits - Big Time
Macca - any of them are great fun
Nirvana Unplugged
Neil Young Unplugged
Dire Straits - Alchemy was that the live one??
The Copper Family - was there such a thing as a studio album??
Me too for Springsteen Seeger Sessions in Dublin
Great versions of the studio album stuff , cracking band ,and some great re-workings of older stuff.
A bottle of Jack , and your sorted.
And in the soul tent
James Brown - Live At The Apollo Volume 2
Crusaders - Scratch
and last but not least
Alan Bown Set - London Swings ' Live At The Marquee Club' which was one side of a joint album with Jimmy James & The Vagabonds
BOB MARLEY
Live at The Lyceum.
Good shout Freddie,any of the "James Brown at The Apollo" albums do it for me.
I too, any very fond of Neil Young Unplugged
And if we stepped intothe world of Bootlegs i could give you more.
We've got a live one here......
....by Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen. Also has probably the worst album cover ever.
Pictures at an Exhibition/ELP (Really!)
Stand in the Fire/Warren Zevon
Live at last/Steeleye Span (Astonishingly, mainly for the epic 15 minute track, Montrose)
and, shame for forgetting, It's too late to stop now/Van Morrison
Butthole Surfers
Double live album. Available as a download from the official site (or at least it was). I'm not sure if it's a complete gig or a compilation from lots of gigs, but it's at least as good as the studio versions of the songs, and probably better. I think because you get the sounds of the gig itself, the ambient noise, the hum of amps, the laboured breathing of Gibby, the noise of the crowd.
Oh, and a Sister of Mercy live bootleg on cassette I bought from Chesterfield market in 1986 with a great version of "Jolene" on it. Not great sound quality but just for the cover version. Which is great.
Live
Stop Making Sense (and to a lesser degree The Name Of This Band Is...) by Talking Heads. Much, much better than the studio versions.
Also Rush In Rio is probably the definitive Rush release. Their studio albums are too patchy to fully satisfy.
Rush in Rio???? Splutter, cough, swoon, faint...
The most gawdawful album Rush ever released! I find it totally unlistenable. Apparently when Alex was producing it his aim was to make it feel and sound like it was being recorded from right in the crowd.
Well he succeeded. It certainly does sound just like it was recorded on a dictaphone by someone standing in the 86th row of the stadium. It wouldn't even be half as bad if they hadn't included two bonus tracks of "official bootleg" "straight from the desk" tracks at the end which sound bloomin' amazing - perfectly highlighting how much of a bunch of dingos' kidneys the sound on th erest of the album is! Sure, it may have been a great performance, the DVD bears that out, but the problem is you can't bleedin' hear that great performance under all the mush, peaky sound and echo.
Notable by being the ONLY Rush album which I haven't downloaded to my iPod or which just doesn't get pulled out of the CD rack.
Yes, the other live albums may have been liberally, ahem, reconstructed in post production (the guys even describe Exit Stage Left as their "live-ish" album) but they're a much superior listening experience, even "Show of Hands" with all its cold, '90s digi-production sound. Give me Exit any day!
I think a Guardian article on a gazillion albums to hear before you die summed it up well when they nominated Thin Lizzy's Live and Dangerous (my personal choice too) as the best ever live album because, whether ot not x% had been rerecorded in a studio it actually sounds like and feels like what a great great great concert feels like!
"Thin Lizzy
Live and Dangerous (1978)
Of course, there were those who carped about the accuracy of the Live part of the title. But it's precisely the beefing-up of the sound in the studio afterwards that gives Live and Dangerous its verisimilitude:this is what great rock bands actually feel like when you're there."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/nov/22/1000tohearbeforeyoudie1
Someone on Amazon thinks pretty much the same
"I would have given this album a full 5 star rating but for the lack of clarity in the recording. Rush themselves were brilliant, but the production quality is substandard. If I listen to it on my Ipod it is just passable, but in the car it distorts and becomes difficult to fully appreciate the instrumental excellence of this band. I don't own the DVD so I cannot tell whether the same problem exists with that. However, tagged onto the end of the third disc is a couple of songs from a different gig, 'Between Sun & Moon', and 'Vital Signs'. These come across clear as a bell, as well as being excellent tracks. All in all pretty good but if you insist on top production quality buy R30 instead."
Personally I think it sounds okay. The odd vocal gets buried, but I like the atmosphere from the show. It wasn't just another gig like R30. It was an important show with significance to the band. I find it to be acceptable, and I don't think the two extra tracks sound substantially better.
Agree that there's no denying what a good and important...
...performance RinR is. The DVD is a testament to that (and interestingly both the DVD stereo and 5.1 mixes are way better than the album imo).
I guess it's a horses for courses thing on the sound of the disc. For me the production just makes it unlistenable/marrs a record of an amazing gig. I guess that, from memory, the main thing for me is that it's all such a wall of sound (but to my ears, not in a good way), the definition of Geddy's bass is all but lost so that it's basically a dull rumbling with an odd clanking noise on top and the guitar seems to form a sort of reverb-y white noise over the top. For me it doesn't come across as atmosphere and vibe but as mush.
I recall being accused by a young Brazillian chap of clearly being someone who hates Rush when I posted similar opinions on a Wal basses web-forum. The irony was of course that it was the opposite - deep disappointment at what ought to have been a crowning glory on top of their other live albums. In the ensuing discussion it was clear that what he was listening to wasn't the sound of the record but the memory of being at an amazing landmark gig - and so, of course, for him it had a huge emotional impact (I feel similarly nostalgic about Show of Hands, having been at the Wembley gigs which were the two days after the Birmingham NEC performance which largely features on the album). Certainly I realise (intellectually and philosophically) the importance of the Rio gig within Rush's career but as a record-buying punter without first hand emotional attachment to the particualar gig it just doesn't cut it for me sound-wise. Sigh!
PS Did you catch them on the last tour? WOW! Probably best I've ever heard them - incredible energy, amazing sound and great to hear some of the older, less played tracks on live again.
I listened to it on my iPod last week
I thought it was the guitar that was lost in the mix and that the bass dominated. I stand by what I said, it sounds good, though it is a bit mushy sounding with a few things lost in the mix.
From Manchester Free Trade Hall...
... Bob Dylan Live1966: The Bootleg Series vol.4: "The Royal Albert Hall Concert".
Kraftwerk
Maximum Minimum. This conversation now ends.
VU 1969 Live with Lou Reed...
...particularly for the never-ending version of 'What Goes On'.
Live!
'Rockin' The Fillmore' by Humble Pie. Possibly Steve Marriot's greatest moment and what about 'Woodstock'? Patchy in parts but stellar performances from Hendrix, Ten Years After, The Who etc.
Allman Brothers
At Filmore East. And I second the vote for Dylan's '66 live album. Also, however duff the man might be might be, Ted Nugent's 'Intensity in Ten Cities' is a great title for a live 'un.
I second many of the above suggestions
and submit for your consideration "Highway Song - Live" by Blackfoot. Starts with train noises followed by an introductory announcement that gets the juices flowing every time...
"Ok London; let 'em hear ya! Welcome from Jacksonville Florida USA, ATCO recording artists BLACKFOOT!"
The band are clearly already on stage at this point because we have already heard a bit of warming up/noodling and they power straight into "Gimme Gimme Gimme".
I maintain that there is no better way to start a rock show than for the band to sneak onto a dark stage and for the lights to only go on when they start playing - preferably a high tempo crowd pleaser.
I will also
submit Warren Zevon's Stand In The Fire. The Rolling Thunder Revue of Bob Dylan's Bootleg Series (dunno which number) is pretty damn fine too, alternate lyrics to Knockin' On Heaven's Door add much interest.
Bowie's 'David Live' and
Bowie's 'David Live' and 'Stage'... fabulous - Stage is worth the price for 'Five Years'
Bowie's 'David Live' and
Bowie's 'David Live' and 'Stage'... fabulous, both - David Live's origins were in the tour for Diamond Dogs, but the songs mutated into philly soul type versions as the ground was being prepared for Young Americans.....Stage is worth the price for 'Five Years'
oops
oops
'Live and Dangerous' by Thin Lizzy
How have we got this far into this thread without it being mentioned?!
Yes, there were overdubs... it's been polished up... who cares?!
It is by far the most enjoyable of Lizzy's records and the only one I still play regularly.
"Any of the goils wanna bit more Oirish in 'em?"... unreconstructed but fabulous nevertheless.
Daft Punk Alive 1997
or Daft Punk Alive 2007. They're the only live albums I've got and are therefore the greatest.
Also I had never heard of MSG until I read this post, they make me think of Grand Funk for some reason - Mark Farner’s wild, shirtless lyrics, the bong-rattling bass of Mel Schacher, the competent drum work of Don Brewer - I'm not really sure why.
Music we only get to hear 'live'...
A type of live album that's always intrigued me is where the songs performed have no actual basis in a studio album at all.
Seems to me this a lot more common in jazz - for example, Keith Jarrett's solo concerts where he comes up with new music in the live environment, every time. In fact, I think the last thing he recorded in a studio was nearly ten years ago ('The Melody at Night, with You') just after he recovered from his illness.
But there are a couple of albums like this outside jazz that I absolutely adore:
Dead Can Dance's 'Toward the Within', where almost everything they played was new (couple of tracks were previously heard, I think).
Richard Thompson's '1000 Years of Popular Music', born to be a show but thankfully preserved (twice) on CD along the way.
What are some others? And am I right (someone please confirm!) that there are a few bands who started out with live records? MC5? Husker Du? Not sure, mind...
Queen
Not sure anybody has mentioned them yet but the did a couple of cracking live sets Live at Wembley '86 and Live Killers...
JAPAN & GABRIEL
I always had a soft spot for Japans 'Oil on Canvas', guess it was the new romantic i me! Peter Gabriels 'Live' is quite good as well - i dont care for the 'oh its all overdubbed and not really live' moaners, who on earth has been to a gig where the sound is exactly like the album/CD anyway - well apart from Milli Vanilli concerts i guess!
Actually, Im also partial to a bit of Jean Michel Jarre live albums for no reason whatsoever i can think of!
Travels by the Pat Metheny
Travels by the Pat Metheny Group (Hepworth used to love them, wonder if he still does) and My Funny Valentine by Miles Davis.
DONNY HATHAWAY
Live - Donny Hathaway, is the definitive live Lp.
No arguments, no banter, just plain old fact.
Probably the best capture of the atmosphere at a gig ever.
Go buy / beg / steal a copy you will never regret it !
Stranglers "Live X-Certificate"
is pretty good.
But I'd go for two that have already been mentioned, Talking Heads' "Stop Making Sense" and Japan's "Oil On Canvas".
These are the only two where I find the live versions better than the originals - very rare indeed.
Live
Not forgetting the late, great Rory Gallagner's 'Live In Europe'.
"The Living End"
By Husker Du. Fantastically good, and far better than the studio versions.
One More From The Road
Lynyrd Skynyrd from the Fox Theatre Altanta GA -
Simply brilliant.
Also - Wilco's Kicking Television is the best approximation I've heard of "being there"
'It's Too Late to Stop Now
by Van Morrison - was great in 1974 and is still great now - like being there - which I guess is what it is all about. I also rate Genesis - Seconds Out - as much for the drumming as anything else. What about Neil Diamond - Hot August Night - just prior to the Spangly Shirt Showman phase?
Live at the Counter Eurovision by
Misty In Roots has to be the best live album ever. I think John Peel thought so too.
...I Suppose They Have To Be Official
Many, many of the suggestions above seem to explode the myth, and hugely great shouts amongst all.
Not sure if anyone has yet mentioned Jeff Buckley's Live at Sin-E or Led Zeppelin In Concert (BBC) 1971...
However, if we are talking about favourite ever live albums, then this should include such great "unofficial" recordings as :
Ah, but methinks that is a completely different conversation altogether...
It is another converstion
I also posed the question in another thread - why do so many official live albums pale when set against bootleg recordings from the same artist that do not have the benefit of studio mixing and overdubs?
Hanx!
Stiff Little Fingers' live album released early in the band's career is the finest without question. Little banter, classic tracks and 10 minutes of the brilliant Johnny Was. Go listen...
9 Below Zero
Live at the Marquee
you can smell the sweat dripping down the walls.
Nomeansno- live+cuddley
This is a great live album, the band are on excellent form, the crowd seem hyped to see them, and the quality of both sound and material are excellent.
People have said that this could be almost a 'Best of...' as it was the first album of Nomeansno that i'd heard to me these area the diffinative versions of these songs
make no bones about it these are musically technically demanding song, when punk has become a byword for sloppyness. Hight lights would include 'Rags 'n Bones', 'The End Of All Things' and the delightful album closer....
Ah, had forgotten that one
it's going on the USB turntable tonight!
Also (as previously declared elsewhere):
No Sleep til Hammersmith - all live Motorhead albums are better than their studio counterparts.
Carole King - Carnegie Hall
John Cale - Fragments of a rainy season
Mark Eitzel - Songs of Love
'In case of Sonic Attack'
1) It's A Space Ritual by Hawkwind. No other live' album captures the feeling of a rock performance as this one does, you feel like you are there every time you hear it, it must be played loud for full effect to take place. It's a cosmic, mind blowing, prog rock experience like no other. "I've got an Orgone Accumulator and it makes me feel greater, i'll see you sometime later when i'm through with my accumulator" Who else but Hawkwind could come up with that?
2) Mott The Hoople Live'(expanded edition) what a band Mott must have been to see live', the great shame of Mott is i don't think they had any idea of just how good they really were.
3)Ramones It's Alive...30 songs in 1 hour played loud,fast and angry back on new years eve 1977. If the Ramones had of split after this gig their legacy in the rock world would still have been assured.
Kudos to The Stones Get Yer Ya Ya's Out and Cheap Trick at Budokhan 2cd edition
Some more votes for..
Misty In Roots: Live At The Counter-Eurovision
Warren Zevon: Stand In The Fire