Metamatic Forums Socialising The Green Room Best Live Album

This topic was suggested by RadioBeach and Alex S on a thread about "A New Kind of Man."

What live album do you think really succeeds, but most importantly, WHY? Is it more important to document an unbelievable experience even if the sound is awful, or do you value a well-recorded yet very straightforward duplicate of a live show? Is it better if the show was from a tour you attended (nostalgia) or something you only wished you could have experienced? Do you prefer innovative playing and creativity over a reliable version of the songs you know? How much crowd interaction, if any, do you want?

I'm going to sit this one out because although I have several old bootlegs and a number of legitimate live recordings of a handful of artists, I find that I don't listen to them that often, and I'm not really sure why. I've got to dig through my collection to see what I have because I really can't think of anything off the top of my head that I've listened to in a long time (NKOM being the recent exception, of course! ).

Yes. that is absolutely it for me. An experience is exactly that and needs to be remembered for what it was and everything involved with it.

I don't have many live albums, but my favourite is Marc Almond at Leicester Cathedral. Simple acoustic set. Forgetting lines, false starts, pin-dropping tension. Beautiful.

Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense. It might be slightly edited in order to fit on one disc, but this recording blows almost all studio versions of the same songs, right out of the water. David Byrne is simply genius!

Although I absolutely love Peter Gabriel's Secret World Live – a fantastic energetic recording – it's almost too perfect. And as somebody who saw the tour, it didn't recreate the show for me as I was hoping. That's largely due to a different line-up and slighty different setlist. So while it fails for me on that front, it's one of my favourite live albums. It also came at an important time in my teenage years.

However, Gabriel's earlier live recording, Plays Live is a very interesting comparison. While SWL was recorded over just two concerts, over two nights, in Italy, Plays Live was recorded all over North America (I think). But listening to it, you'd never know it was made up from several shows. I probably prefer this album to SWL, because of its raw energy and more simple live sound. Plays Live really captures Gabriel at his best prior to the huge success that would soon follow.

There are several live albums by Gary Numan that I think are excellent. White Noise, Dark Light and Live at Shepherd's Bush. The latter is a superb recording of contemporary Numan, and an excellent set list. I missed 1997's Exile tour, so it's great to have such a good recording of it. The Dark Light album was the first Numan album I bought, so I have that attachment to it, but I thikn there's a raw quality to the songs hat really makes it exciting, plus Gary forgetting to start "Friends" always raises a smile

Tori Amos To Venus and Back: disc 2, Still Orbiting. Sadly this isn't a full concert, but a strong selection of great songs from a wonderful tour. Tori at her best. I saw that tour and it absolutely blew me away, so that recording is a much-loved souvenir for me.

Kraftwerk's Minimum-Maximum. This has been discussed here before, but it's worth a mention here. A great album.

Other live albums I've played for hours on end, include Live Baby Live from INXS and Jarre's Hong Kong - that's a real stunner!

Anyway, that's me done! I bet there's one I've forgotten.....

Live albums…hmmmmmm….

I still question them (no honest, I really do..), some make you feel as if you were there (which is good if you weren’t), some are snapshots of history (which is also good if you weren’t there), and some, sadly are cash-in’s.

I wasn’t able to see Sylvian on his semi-acoustic ‘Slow Fire’ tour – but there’s a recording made of a Canadian show, which makes you feel as if you’re sat there in the audience, or round a campfire (hey, it’s my head and if I want to sit round a campfire with Canadians then that’s what I want to do…).

At the other end of the scale is one of my all-time favourite bands, Suicide who supported Elvis Costello in Brussels, on June 16th, 1978. “23 Minutes over Brussels” was recorded by Howard Thompson on to a cassette, and it sounds like it. The performance is legendary because it becomes clear that the Belgian punks don’t want to see men with drum machines and keyboards - perhaps the future scared them, whatever – the gig descends into a riot, the audience stealing Vega’s microphone (and if I want to try and steal it back in my head then that’s what I want to do…). Also at this end of the scale would be pretty much any Throbbing Gristle live recording from ’76-’78. None are pretty, all are badly recorded – but there’s an atmosphere because of the times they were recorded in that perhaps we’ll never hear again, or we’ll never here again for other reasons – like Joy Division live albums.

Throbbing Gristle also used to record every gig they did and issue it as a cassette shortly after – this would fund their studio, tours and future recordings thus keeping them resolutely independent. Some would say Gary Numan has taken the gauntlet TG threw down when you consider the amount of live albums/DVDs he’s issued over the years.

Joy Division live albums...full of atmosphere, and sometimes ‘Atmosphere’ but let’s face it, he’s been dead nearly thirty years so the "Preston" and "Les Bains Douches" albums as much as they are documents of a time long gone, are also cash-ins. Another cash-in would be “Oil on Canvas” by Japan. They even had to go into a studio in Canada (what is it about Canada in this text?) to re-record ‘Nightporter’ and mix it in with the live recording, and then bulk out the album with various studio recordings. But for some unknown reason I still like this album – maybe it’s because it’s the only official live recording they issued.

The live recordings I return to again and again are never because they’re in HD5.1SurroundSoundBlueMantaraywhatever, but because they act like a time machine and can take you back to a moment in time and really encapsulate that moment in time;

Velvet Underground; ‘Live At Max’s Kansas City’
Suicide ’23 Minutes Over Brussels’
Suicide; ‘Half Alive’
Siouxsie & The Banshees; ‘Nocturne’
John Foxx; ‘A New Kind of Man’
John Foxx & Louis Gordon; ‘Retro Future’
Cabaret Voltaire; ‘Live At The YMCA’
Bowie; ‘Philadelphia ‘76’,
David Sylvian; ‘In Praise of Shamans ‘88’
David Sylvian; ‘Slow Fire’
Fennesz; ‘Live In Japan’
Gary Numan; ‘Living Ornaments ‘79/’80/’81’,
Gary Numan; ‘White Noise’
Harmonia; ‘Live ‘74’
Harold Budd; ‘Perhaps’
Joy Division; ‘Amsterdam ’80’
Throbbing Gristle; ‘Live Vol.2 ’77-‘78’

Gazza

Gary Numan: Living Ornaments 79/80/81

Queen :Live Killers.
No,im not a Queen fan,but this album for me sums up what a live lp should be.

Double.
Big stuff.
Drum solos.
Guitar wankery.
Dosent sound like its been overdubbed.

I would not say the best live album but I do have fond memories of playing The Who Live at Leeds non-stop.

Two of the best live albums I forgot to mention are the two Genesis The Way We Walk recordings from the early 90s. Not a big fan in general, but those are stunning.

What am I saying!!! Of course this is a fantastic album, but easily outclassed by

JUDY GARLAND - Live at Carnegie Hall, April 23 1961

The definitive 2-disc set released in 2000, with all the talking, tears and interludes is absolutely remarkable.

I can't believe I forgot this. One of the most-played albums I own...

I like Devo's Now it can be told. Many performances are quite different from the originals, which I like. The stuff is well recorded and the gig grows nicely from slow version of Jocko Homo to final's Somewhere with Devo. David Kendrick fits very well in drummer's seat.