Live albums: C or D?

on the whole, dud although talking heads's "stop making sense" is one of my favourite albums ever. totally depends on recording quality and whether the band actually try and do something different to replicating their studio sound onstage.

Velvets "Live 1969"

Space Ritual, No Sleep Til Hammersmith etc etc

I suspect this has been done before...

Many times

Live at fucking Leeds

Sorry but this a stupid and overcooked argument. Let the counter-examples come raining down. I'll add Ginger Baker's Air Force double LP from 1970. Just got it this weekend. Fucking awesome.

Too broad in scope to subject to a simple C/D, obv. The 25% (or 10% or 4% or etc.) of the truly great live recordings justify the existence of all the crap ones. Unless they don't.

It helps if you draw a distinction between "performing artists" and "recording artists," of course.

For me, a good live album is one where you're listening going "This is really good, I wish I was at that show".

^^^ or one where the musicians don't sound like "Our contract really sucks, I'm glad this recording will finally get us out of it".

I know it's an incredibly broad question, of course. But I remain convinced.

Swans (the band) refute the first post of this thread several hundred times over.

Swans is the best example, yes.

The 25% (or 10% or 4% or etc.) of the truly great live recordings

Unmangled version = "The 25% (or 10% or 4% or...) of live recordings which are truly great"

"Remember" is much much better than I expected. I am impressed not only at how much the band rocks and how tight they are but...the edited together songs "Blueberry Boat" and "Chris Michaels" are a brilliant conceit, especially coming from a band that restructures their songs live as much often as the FF's do.

There's good and bad, obviously. Probably more bad, just like any other way you might care to classify stuff.

Some good:
Get Yer Ya-ya's Out
Blow'n Chunks
Bo Diddley's Beach Party
High Rise Live

I was reading today about BB King's Live at the Regal. I don't think I've ever heard a BB King LP, but this one has me tempted.

Agharta
too much other jazz to list

I'm sympathetic to the thread premise to the extent that I have heard an awful lot of live recordings that made me long for better sound quality. But the best live recordings more than make up for the weak ones.

C or D, fake live albums?

jazz otm

I think I got a fake "live" album once. Some sixties crap I got at a truck stop. I used to hate live albums but I've been alone a lot lately it is nice to hear some ambiance and crowd noise mixed in with the music. My dog also likes hearing happy people in the background.

You guys are right, blues is probably quite good live, and that Velvets album is pretty good, too.

Tim Buckley's "Dream Letter" is another one of those absolute classics that more than makes up for the duds.

Thin Lizzy "Live and Dangerous", Ramones "It's Alive" (both allegedly somewhat faked up, both fucking amazing) and Suicide's "1/2 Alive"

13th Floor Elevators' "Live" is studio recordings with fake applause poured over the top. Terrible. The naked studio sessions (without the 'audience' noise) are great.

Talking of psych, the Seeds "Raw and Alive" is transparently fake, and larded with ridiculous levels of audience hysteria, but at the same time, perhaps the loosest, most unhinged thing they ever recorded. Blessed be, Sky!

Thanks for the reminder! I think I have that Seeds one. I also have this, which I got for three bucks, just to hear what it sounded like:

John's Children: "Their improbable saga was launched when the single actually reached the bottom depths of the U.S. Top 100, cracking the Top Ten in some Florida and California markets. The group's U.S. company, White Whale, requested an album, which they shelved when it was received -- an LP with the then-unthinkable title of Orgasm. The actual album consisted of mediocre studio material smothered in audience screams lifted from the A Hard Day's Night soundtrack, and was, bizarrely, actually released in 1971 (and reissued a decade later). Their second single, "Just What You Want -- Just What You'll Get"/"But You're Mine," reached the British Top 40 and featured a guitar solo by recently departed Yardbird Jeff Beck on the B-side. A brief German tour followed, during which they managed to upstage the headliners, the Who (with their theatrics, not their music). "

I would rank Neil Young's "Live at Massey Hall" among his best albums. The performance is outstanding, not a weak track on it, and the sound quality is so good you would never imagine it was recorded in 1971.

See also: Fake Live Track

The Birthday Party's "Drunk on the Pope's Blood" EP is absolutely unfuckwithable. I'd sling it on right now, but for the presence of the in-laws:

"So, what is this, Soukesian?"

"Uh . . it's called . ."

I'd love that EP, Soukesian. Probably the only BP thing I don't have. Must pick it up some time (there are a few reasonably priced copies available on Discogs)

Absolutely essential. Nick's extended shriek at the start of "Loose" sounds like he's turning into one of the Lovecraftian beasties from John Carpenter's "The Thing", and the rest of the band seem to be going the same way,

I would rank Neil Young's "Live at Massey Hall" among his best albums. The performance is outstanding, not a weak track on it, and the sound quality is so good you would never imagine it was recorded in 1971.

imo live albums are better if they're not released for decades - then there's more to be interested in (i.e., history)

yeah, i sort of agree -- with hindsight, live records can represent an era better than the studio releases.
I suppose a different question for this thread might be TS: Live albums recorded in one night vs. Tour compilations ...

imo live albums are better if they're not released for decades - then there's more to be interested in (i.e., history)

Unless, you know, the artist involved fades into obscurity/irrelevance instead of sticking around for decades. Which is the case with 99% of "popular" music nowadays... right?

I don't quite follow you - even if an artist fades into obscurity, I'm unlikely to be interested in a live album if it records shows I might well have attended in the past year or two.

How many songs have only ever been released as live versions?

And by 'live versions' I don't mean 'recorded in a studio live with no overdubs', I mean 'recorded in performance with an audience and you can hear the audience as an intrinsic part of the recording'.

Obviously the whole of Kick Out The Jams, but there must be plenty of others.

If the 'platonic' essence of pop/rock is 'the recording' (and for classical is 'the score'; and for jazz is 'the performance') (this is reductive, obviously), this seems like a strange way for a pop/rock song to exist, if there's no official studio version ever released.

neil young has done this a lot. all of time fades away, for starters, plus lots of notable songs sprinkled throughout his career ("the needle and the damage done," "come on baby let's go downtown," parts of rust never sleeps, etc.

bruce springsteen has a bunch. don't think "seeds" exists anywhere but his first live album. ditto for "paradise by the c" and "fire" (actually, he finally released studio "fire" about 25 years later, so maybe that doesn't count). i'm sure he's got others.

johnny cash's "a boy named sue"

a ton of Zappa is like this isn't it?

all the Tangerine Dream live albums I have are totally new compositions that don't appear elsewhere. they're really no different from the actual studio albums

There's a bunch listed here:

classic albums with (oddly enough) one live track on them

(actually, he finally released studio "fire" about 25 years later, so maybe that doesn't count)

Similarly, not sure how/if the Who's cover of "Summertime Blues" counts. They recorded at least two studio versions before the live version was released (on Live at Leeds, and as a single) in 1970, but none of the studio versions were released until the late 90s.

I brought this up on Twitter the other day, asking about entire live albums composed of all new material. The only one I could think of was Ted Nugent's Intensities in 10 Cities.

Does Nighthawks at the Diner count?

xp there must be a lot of jazz records that fit that definition, I should think?

Probably, but I'm specifically discounting jazz from this (re: performance-as-essence rather than recording-as-essence). (Which is obviously an arbitrary definition.)

ah yes, sorry, didn't read your revive post properly

True Love Waits

It'd be interesting to see a list of studio albums that were primarily recorded live, then overdubbed/edited/cleaned up in the studio for a polished final recording. For instance, supposedly Lou Reed used a bunch of live takes as basic tracks for some of his solo stuff. And I know Zappa did this a lot too.

that's a lot of what Neil Young's Rust Never Sleeps is as well

I imagine it's on a dizzying amount of 70's 'studio albums'.

It'd be interesting to see a list of studio albums that were primarily recorded live, then overdubbed/edited/cleaned up in the studio for a polished final recording.

main one that comes to mind is King Crimson's Starless and Bible Black though they used this technique on a few over tracks (namely "Providence" on Red).

How overdubbed was Rust Never Sleeps? I've been listening to that for decades and always just took it to be a live album.

Bunch of tracks on "Harvest" too, right?

reed's street hassle has a few distinctly live tracks.

a lot of the zappa stuff you wouldn't nessessarily know as live without being told. lots of tracks where he splices in a live solo.

yeah I think Zappa blurs this line more than anyone, there was a whole string of his albums in the late 70's and early 80's where you'd randomly hear crowd noise, and even his explicitly live albums like Roxy and Elsewhere clearly were overdubbed to hell and back.

Grateful Dead did this a ton, Skull and Roses and Europe '72 have a lot of original songs.

How overdubbed was Rust Never Sleeps? I've been listening to that for decades and always just took it to be a live album.
most of the acoustic stuff on side one was recorded at solo gigs in early 1978 and then overdubbed. and then most of the electric stuff is from the tour w/ crazy horse later that year ( but I believe is heavily overdubbed as well). Live Rust is the more straightforward live album (w/ a mix of old/new material).

How many songs have only ever been released as live versions?

Two that spring to mind are the Cramps' Smell of Female (all of it) and about half of Modern Lovers Live.

Original poster not OTM by the way. Live albums are great and I wish more bands would do more of them.

Humble Pie live records are better than their studio albums