Why were live albums more popular in the 70s than they are now?

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back in the day, it seems for several musicians the live LP was their popular breakthrough. that doesn't happen anymore.

then, it seems, live releases were prestigious. the record company went nuts with the gatefolds & the fold-outs & the double and triple LPs and all that. today, unless it's a reunion of some hugely popular name (fleetwood mac) or something outrageous (pearl jam) a live release tends to be a fans-only kinda thing and is probably the lowest-selling release in everyone's catalog.

what was different then?

― circus boy, Wednesday, 5 May 2004 02:46 (twenty-one years ago)

studio recording technology was far poorer therefore live albums were the only way to hear the band in full flight.Nowadays albums are a much closer approximation of the actual live sound of the band

― evan chronister (evan chronister), Wednesday, 5 May 2004 02:58 (twenty-one years ago)

I've thought about this, too. Cheap Trick, Kiss, Peter Frampton, Bob Seger, etc.

one thing that's different, although maybe not the biggest reason for the decline in popular live albums, is the fact that people couldn't easily record & trade live recordings back then. if you wanted to hear a band live, you either had to go to the show or buy the one show the label released as an LP.

― Al (sitcom), Wednesday, 5 May 2004 03:00 (twenty-one years ago)

Maybe people are just wising up to the fact that live albums can be sort of superfluous?

― Tim Ellison, Wednesday, 5 May 2004 03:24 (twenty-one years ago)

Evan, I call bullshit. Bands have even more studio wankery now to make PERFECT TUNEZ!

― GET TO THA' (PRICE) CHOPPA!!!!!!!! ROFFLE!!!!!!!! (ex machina), Wednesday, 5 May 2004 03:25 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah but live it's easier to reproduce the studio sound.The simple fact of the matter is even the loudest most rockin recordings of the 70's sounded like crap compared to the live shows. I used to love live albums.I still download loads of live shows off of audio torrent sites.Maybe you're right and what has happened is the general record buying public wants to hear those perfect versions every time as opposed to real people creating the magic of the moment.Does this make Timbaland & Neptunes the new Phil Spector?

― evan chronister (evan chronister), Wednesday, 5 May 2004 04:47 (twenty-one years ago)

Hmm, Cheap Trick was a special case --a fluke. "Budokan" came in through the backdoor as a Japanese import. Epic didn't jump on a domestic re-release until after it was well on its way to becoming the band's most successful album to that point.

Kiss' "Alive" was a standard practices thing of trying to give material that had already been covered another chance in the market. If you believe it's actually a real "live" album, I have a whole bunch like it for you, like Thin Lizzy's "Live and Dangerous" or Lou Reed's "Rock and Roll Animal" or Judas Priest's...

Same with Peter Frampton. Frampton's Camel had about shot the bolt on the studio recordings and the live album redid it all and was toured heavily. Frampton had been through the same proc with Humble Pie. "Rockin' the Fillmore" broke the band big.

― George Smith, Wednesday, 5 May 2004 04:54 (twenty-one years ago)

What was the last live album that really meant something, critically or commercially? Something that wasn't seen as a cash in for hardcore fans only, but was well-known and oft-heard by "general" music fans?
Nirvana : Unplugged in New York would be my pick. If you discount all Unplugged albums (although many of them were the result of several takes and thus weren't exactly "live"), then what? 101? (not much mainstream attention). Something by Rush? ????

― Barry Bruner (Barry Bruner), Wednesday, 5 May 2004 05:07 (twenty-one years ago)

In the 70s, the idea of a live album was still something of a novelty. Except for jazz, there weren't many done at all until then. So there's that.
Now, everybody does one. And it almost always seems to be just sort of that stop-gap or contract-fulfillment kind of thing. It's a real easy and cheap way to get a product on the shelves.
Also, most bands suck live now.

― Huck, Wednesday, 5 May 2004 05:17 (twenty-one years ago)

20-minute drum solos.

― boldbury (boldbury), Wednesday, 5 May 2004 13:47 (twenty-one years ago)

That Bruce box set.

― mark grout (mark grout), Wednesday, 5 May 2004 13:49 (twenty-one years ago)

The correct answer is MTV. In the 70s live albums were the only way for fans to interface with the bands outside of actual shows.

― Mark (MarkR), Wednesday, 5 May 2004 13:57 (twenty-one years ago)

And they took the next logical step with the Unplugged series?

― Barry Bruner (Barry Bruner), Wednesday, 5 May 2004 14:01 (twenty-one years ago)

The 70s live album to beat is Time Fades Away because it was all new material. That concept needs to be used more, but as mentioned above bands aren't very often good enough live to have the confidence to do this.

Of course, Neil Young is rumored to be disappointed enough in this performance to not want it re-issued on CD, but I tend to believe more the reasoning that the master, which was I think straight to acetate, is either gone or unusable.

― southern lights (southern lights), Wednesday, 5 May 2004 16:41 (twenty-one years ago)

because Peter Frampton looked like a male Farrah Fawcett and girls could hang the posters in their bathroom and "explore their bodies" while standing up in the shower

― uh (eetface), Wednesday, 5 May 2004 16:42 (twenty-one years ago)

because the 'Kiss Alive!' version of "100,000 Years" actually goes on for that length of time

― dave q, Wednesday, 5 May 2004 21:55 (twenty-one years ago)

It's because people smoked more weed back then.

― Davlo (Davlo), Thursday, 6 May 2004 02:15 (twenty-one years ago)

because Thin Lizzy *are* 'Live and Dangerous!' Yeah!

― de, Thursday, 6 May 2004 02:21 (twenty-one years ago)

Because it was the zenith of the arena rock era, in which concerts were held up as transcendental, quasi-religious experiences (the fact that little was remembered of the actual event afterwards was helpful in this regard). The live LP traded on the notion that you could buy and recreate some of that experience in your very own bedroom.

― Collardio Gelatinous (collardio), Thursday, 6 May 2004 02:33 (twenty-one years ago)

because people were idiots in the 70s

― $corpium ($corpium), Thursday, 6 May 2004 02:39 (twenty-one years ago)

that too.

― Collardio Gelatinous (collardio), Thursday, 6 May 2004 02:39 (twenty-one years ago)

I asked him if he knew what time he had
He said he wasn't sure maybe a quarter past
The kids of today should defend themselves against the seventies

Appeared in his eyes as we stood in line just to have a look
But the pages I found looked like an unbound coloring book
The kids of today should defend themselves against the seventies
It's not reality, just someone else's sentimentality...
It won't work for you...

Baby boomers selling you rumors of their history
Forcing youth away from the truth of what's real today
The kids of today should defend themselves against the seventies

Stadium minds with stadium lies gotta make you laugh
Garbage bandits 'gainst true defenders of the craft

The kids of today should defend themselves against the seventies
It's not reality, just someone else's sentimentality...
Look what it did to Watt
Speakin' as a child of the seventies...

The kids against the seventies
Kids against the seventies
The kids of today should defend themselves against the seventies

― Mark (MarkR), Thursday, 6 May 2004 02:45 (twenty-one years ago)

Also, most bands suck live now.

on. the. money.

― the 'surface' 'noise' (electricsound), Thursday, 6 May 2004 02:48 (twenty-one years ago)

I think the concept of large-scale arena/stadium shows has become more and more rare, too.

― uh (eetface), Thursday, 6 May 2004 02:49 (twenty-one years ago)

Actually, even more than "most bands suck live now", the quality of live sound engineers has taken a spectacular dive in recent years as well

― the 'surface' 'noise' (electricsound), Thursday, 6 May 2004 02:50 (twenty-one years ago)

on an aside, one practice that even dates back to the original days of live recordings that drives me insane is the massive overdubs.

Now yea, I can see doing it in a few places on a live recording here and there, maybe the mic cut out, or something small and nitpicky, but if you wind up being too liberal with it, you're essentially making another studio recording.

I remember reading on one live recording they said they had to overdub for some reason because the mistakes would take away from the enjoyment of the show. I dunno, I never thought hearing the fact that a band is human takes away from the show, sometimes it's enjoyable and even funny to hear your favorite band fuck up a few times.

Metallica is one band who has abused the overdubs/studio fixes on many of their later live recordings, which is then funny when you see or hear a bootleg of them live....oh, they go all over the place sometimes.

― uh (eetface), Thursday, 6 May 2004 02:54 (twenty-one years ago)

I think Mark's original point about MTV & band interface is a good 'un. I also wonder whether common "knowledge" about "Live 'n' Dangerous," "Rock and Roll Animal" etc. isn't horseshit - I have several bootlegs from the week's worth of shows that went into "Rock 'n' Roll Animal," for example, and guess what: they sound like muddier recordings of exactly the same stuff, because Lou Reed had him a tight-ass band! As he usually does.

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Thursday, 6 May 2004 02:59 (twenty-one years ago)

To those who wrote that "most bands suck live now", what is it exactly that sucks about them now, as opposed to then? Are most bands not as tight? Less adventurous? More boring personalities? Do they tour less, and therefore aren't as well polished? Is there an obvious answer that I'm overlooking? (sorry, I didn't see any concerts in the 70's :) ).
... drives me insane is the massive overdubs. Yes, to hell with overdubs. The studio is the studio, and the stage is the stage.

― Barry Bruner (Barry Bruner), Thursday, 6 May 2004 04:36 (twenty-one years ago)

Couldn't buy concert videos or DVDs in the '70s.

― Autumn Almanac (Autumn Almanac), Thursday, 6 May 2004 04:40 (twenty-one years ago)

ok what i said probably doesn't apply to a lot of the bigger bands (ergo making it irrelevant, probably) but yeah many live bands i see these days aren't that tight or well-rehearsed, which is not a problem when you're there but i wouldn't want to hear a recording of it later.

― the 'surface' 'noise' (electricsound), Thursday, 6 May 2004 04:42 (twenty-one years ago)

only performers who have ever released a live album that i've thought stood up to their recorded work = gbv, arlo guthrie, and to a lesser extent fleetwood mac (on "the dance")

― the 'surface' 'noise' (electricsound), Thursday, 6 May 2004 04:43 (twenty-one years ago)

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