preferred live versions to definitive studio versions. A good case in point is John Martyn's live version of I'd Rather Be The Devil that was available on the original CD reissue of Solid Air. Although I knew the song first from the studio version the live version trumped it easily: just more dynamic and pulsating with his use of the Echoplex creating sonic bouncing balls all over the place that the studio version couldn't hope to capture.

for pretty much all that's important in Deep Purple's oeuvre, i.e. the entire track listing of their live LP Made In Japan. Basically a bloody loud improvising jazz band which they weren't so much in the studio.

Blackout and Breaking Glass on Bowie's Stage are far superior to the studio versions too, IMHO.

Agreed live albums were value for money but there was also an excitement about them, imagining the gig that I was far too young to go to, the shouts, the atmosphere, making up your own visuals in your head. Now every bugger ruins this with their camera phones...

There are a tracks that I owned as singles, that when I've come to buy them on compilations or on the original releases of the albums are different and it bugs me a lot when that happens.

Specifically Temptation by Heaven 17, the album/comp version is longer, there's a little instrumental bridge between verses that goes on twice as long; and Senses Working Overtime by XTC was edited for the single version and the extra bits are unnecessary to my ears.

but also applies when your original copy sounds different.
Frankies' 'Welcome to the Pleasure Dome' was a big album for me in my mid-teens. There was a scratch on the title track- heard a 'correct' version years later which sounded just weird

I bought Hanx! by Stiff Little Fingers because it had 'At the Edge' on it. Having played it to death, it's those renditions I think of rather than the originals, particularly 'Johnny Was'. Since it was effectively the best of the first two albums, I didn't get Nobody's Heroes until much later and I still don't have Inflammable Material.

to my parents Motown Chartbusters compilation and on Tracks Of My Tears the needle would stick on the last syllable Smokey sings before the little drum break in the middle of the song. It would go on forever if I didn't give it a jolt and to this day every time I hear the song it doesn't sound right without the repetition of the 'ooh' 'ooh' 'ooh' ad infinitum.
Similarly I had Rubber Soul on cassette that a friend had taped for me but he didn't leave a gap at the beginning so for years and years I had no idea that there was a guitar riff into to 'Drive My Car'. It had always started on my copy with the first line of the song. It still seems quite new to hear that riff.

Sounds a million times better on "Under a Blood Red Sky" than the tinny weedy version on "War".

Altogether now "There's been a lot of talk about this next song, maybe, maybe too much talk. This song is not a rebel song, this song is Sunday, Bloody Sunday".

Cue 20 years later Bonio sets it up as a rebel song...

I had on cassette (audio from Radio One and video from The Tube or Whistle Test) plenty of live performances of songs that I only own as studio versions now; and even now 20-25 years on from most of it, the studio versions still have an echo of the live versions that I knew better underneath/over the top. Like some strange musical ghost.

by The Smiths - always loved the version on a double vinyl compilation I've got called 21 Years of Alternative Radio 1 (I think it was from a Peel Session). It's just got more jangles.

And on the soundtrack album from forgettable Brit film Shopping is an absolutely belting version of Water Pistol Man, by The Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy. It's miles pacier and intense than the more wishy washy version on their LP Hypocrisy Is The Greatest Luxury.

The thundering live version of 'What Goes On' by the Velvet Underground from '1969, Live with Lou Reed' steamrollers all over the weeddy studio version.

Ryan Adams' cover of Wonderwall pulls the amazing trick of sounding like it's actually about something; rather than the original, which to my mind sounds like a bunch of words the songwriter thought sounded good together but fails to actually mean anything.

Sorry. You asked.

... are far superior to the studio originals.

Caravan - first heard on 'Too Late to Stop Now' - in my book the finest live album ever recorded. Dammit - they're all brilliant!

...seems to be that live versions are often better than the originals. That could well be because when songs are recorded in the studio, they are often freshly written and the band haven't really fully got to grips with them. Recording techniques with over dubs, etc probably don't help in terms of the 'feel' of a track and can make them sound stilted. Live albums are usually made from the best recordings of a tour, or a single classic gig, by which time the band have lived with the songs for years in some cases and are bound to sound more dynamic.

Elvis Presley never, that I've heard, nailed Suspicious Minds on stage. Although often interesting, he always took it way too fast (do we blame the pills to get him through those midnight shows?) and completely missed the bruised poignancy of both his own and Mark James' versions, recorded under the watchful eye of Chips Moman at his American Sound Studio in north Memphis: the greatest, most underrated studio in rock history.

Radiohead doing Paranoid Android at Glastonbury in 1997. The loud bits are ferocious, and the "rain down" section raises the hairs on my arms - it's the interplay between Thom's vocal, Ed's (excellent) backing vocal and Jonny's mellotron. Just tingle-making.