Live Albums Full Of Otherwise Unrecorded Music: C/D?

I don't mean a live album that has one song that doesn't appear on a band's studio releases - I mean the practice of releasing a whole batch of new material that was recorded live, instead of in a studio.

Examples:

Ambrose Akinmusire's A Rift In Decorum: Live At The Village Vanguard
Ted Nugent's Intensities In 10 Cities

Discuss!

Surely this is not uncommon in jazz. In rock, Time Fades Away by Neil Young and Concerto for Group and Orchestra by Deep Purple come to mind.

neil young - rust never sleeps
lauryn hill - mtv unplugged no. 2.0

Yeah, it happens a fair amount in jazz, not always deliberately — for example, the Mahavishnu Orchestra live album Between Nothingness and Eternity contains then-new pieces "Dream," "Sister Andrea," and "Trilogy," but studio recordings of all those pieces existed, they just weren't released at the time. They came out on The Lost Trident Sessions in 1999.

Pictures at an Exhibition - Emerson Lake and Palmer

Ricochet - Tangerine Dream (though probably produced with significant studio doctoring)

Encore might not count because they sneak a bit of "Stratosfear" in at one point.

Zappa, Sheik Yerbouti

John Cale - Sabotage Live (my favorite album of his!)

probably produced with significant studio doctoring

...certainly would apply to most Zappa "live" records released in his lifetime.

Sabotage is a great call

Europe 72 - the Grateful Dead (also w/ sonic sweetening)

Jackson Browne's Running on Empty

...certainly would apply to most Zappa "live" records released in his lifetime.

Without derailing this into yet another Zappa discussion, when did he begin the practice of yanking a guitar solo from a live performance and inserting it into a studio recording of an entirely different song, and stuff like that? Was it in the '70s after being pushed offstage?

A majority of R.E.M.'s New Adventures in Hi-Fi. Also Joe Jackson's Big World and Todd Rundgren's 2nd Wind were "public recording sessions" rather than concerts, but were done in front of audiences.
I don't know if Nighthawks at the Diner by Tom Waits counts, as it's a "fake" concert recording done in a studio.

Dead Can Dance's "Toward the Within" is like 2/3rds previously-unreleased material, although they'd been playing a handful of the "new" tracks live for years at that point

Heathen Earth - Throbbing Gristle

Europe 72 - the Grateful Dead (also w/ sonic sweetening)

This has four or five previously released tracks on it?

Zappa was doing "asynchrony" at least as early as 1979 on Joe's Garage.

xpost

True, but there's virtually a whole album of songs that never got a studio version.

Charles Mingus presents Charles Mingus - another fake live alb.

Tom Waits - Nighthawks at the Diner
Husker Du - Land Speed Record (and aren't there a few more 80s hardcore records that were live like this)

Was going to mention Jackson Browne, Joe Jackson & R.E.M., took too long to type, y'all beat me to them. Ya bastards.

Tom Lehrer: That Was The Year That Was. Comedy record, but it's all unreleased songs with no more banter between songs than a cabaret performer might have.

"Kick Out the Jams".

For reference: Live Albums Featuring All New Or Otherwise Unrecorded Material

Ha, this is clearly a fixation of mine...

Tom Lehrer also re-recorded his first 2 albums as live performances with much banter.

Jane's Addiction's debut album was recorded live, but definitely leans toward dud.

Without derailing this into yet another Zappa discussion, when did he begin the practice of yanking a guitar solo from a live performance and inserting it into a studio recording of an entirely different song, and stuff like that? Was it in the '70s after being pushed offstage?

"Friendly Little Finger," 1975. I don't think the practice rose out of the assault or otherwise had anything to do with it.

https://wiki.killuglyradio.com/wiki/Xenochrony

Jeff Buckley's debut EP (later expanded to double album) Live at Sin-E

Hüsker Dü, Land Speed Record. Kind of a cheat since it was their debüt.

and of course there are bands with only live recordings:

Les Rallizes Dénudés- '77 Live

but Huskers didn't subsequently release studio versions of anything but "Brickelayer" right?

I'd say first Jane's Addiction album is their best release by a large margin

challops have been dealt

huge classic. exciting and cool

Best I can do is sneer "oh yeah?!!" and run like hell. It's all I got, but it works more often than you'd think.

Rovo - Tonic 2001

I think studio versions of some of these pieces were later released, but their catalog is a bit obscure, so hard to be certain.

I believe the first (three?) album(s) were recorded live on the red light.

first Utopia album?

Todd Rundgren’s album 2nd wind is technically a studio album but it was recorded before a live audience. Not sure what that experience was like.

Louden Wainwright’s Unrequited is half studio, half live. All new songs.

Another personal favorite: The Modern Lovers' Precise Modern Lovers Order (Live In Berkeley And Boston).

A bunch of stuff from the demos that ultimately became this line-up's one legit album, but most of these songs were never released before, much less as studio recordings, and all but one of these are originals. (The exception is a cover of "Foggy Notion.")

*A bunch of songs that were recorded among the demos

Oh, duh, Band of Gypsys.

801 Live

Sonic's Rendezvous Band only recorded one song, but there are multiple live albums.

Single album-length compositions done as a live recording through the means of their practical/installation purpose, like Alva Noto/Ryuichi Sakamoto's Glass = classic

Jane's Addiction's debut album was recorded live, but definitely leans toward dud.

― henry s, Monday, August 18, 2025 12:51 PM (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Jane's Addiction's first album was live...so, there's that.

― henry s, Sunday, August 1, 2010 4:24 PM (fifteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Still got it!

Another Neil Young: Life

Neko Case: The Tigers Have Spoken

Phil Ochs In Concert (which apparently was subject to a bunch of studio rerecording and sweetening)

IIRC, The Death Defying Judy Henske was a proto-Nighthawks In The Diner live in the studio w/an audience affair.

Rick Wakeman: Journey to the centre of the earth

King Crimson, Starless and Bible Black

Quite a few of these, though less as the years went on and they began playing "the hits".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TG24

Another Neil Young: Life

― Lithium Just Madison (C. Grisso/McCain), Tuesday, 19 August 2025 04:12 (twelve hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

My fav example of this probably