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The Voices of Reason: Live Albums
There's nothing that quite compares to seeing live music. The experience is about more than just listening to the music—there is a bond formed between musician and audience. No recording could exactly reproduce this experience, but some come close...
Question: What artist/band produced the best live album ever?
Mark May—Sorry, I can't answer that question. Since I cannot say that any one live album is better than the other ten or so I might consider, I am going to submit my list of favorite live albums (limited to those that I have actually heard):
Special recognition for George Carlin's three live albums from the early 70s that I still listen and laugh to - AM & FM, Class Clown, Occupation: Fool)
Dileep Rao—I know there are brilliant answers to this all over the place but, in my memory, Nirvana's Unplugged in New York takes it. This album contains a small, spare set of tunes, totally recontextualized, taken out of the punk-metal evolution that was 'grunge' and presented on their own merits. Cobain is intense and focused, his life very near its tragic, stupid end. He was a force of truth and unrepentant honesty and with each song on this album, he rips it anew from his marrow and presents it in its full, awkward, dark beauty. His sense of humor is evident as his sweetness.
The album begins with his truthful intro, "This is off our first album,
most people don't own it." He then dives into "About a Girl,"
its grinding wheezy guitars with their deceptive rhythm and melodic progression.
Nirvana was always less a 'grunge' band than it was a punk throwback, a kind
of
Pixies led by a single darker force—the Pixies being the band Cobain
had always said he should have been in. His music was as inspired by
the Beatles as it was by anything harder or louder. His music was presented
stripped of its ferocity but not of its intense, cogent lyricism.
On this album, Cobain is generous to his fellow musicians, covering a pair of Meat Puppet tunes and a David Bowie song, "The Man Who Sold the World," which never sounded so fresh and resilient, a real tip of the hat to Bowie's great talents as a song writer. However, it is on Leadbelly's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" that we see the shining, emotional power of Cobain channelling something from beyond the plane of normal concert-going, building a nearly spiritual howl of pain before the lights go out. It is a deeply moving and beautiful album, if sad as a constant reminder of what we lost in 1994 to the stupidity of suicide.
Ian Wigley—For me, Thin Lizzy's Live and Dangerous album checks in at the finest live album bar none. There's little in the line of overdubs, no crowd enhancements, and basically some of the finest guitar work you'll hear (courtesy of Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson).
The album's mixed so you have a guitar player in one speaker, the other guitar player in the other speaker, and drums and Phil's bass straight down the middle. You can literally hear one guitar player pushing the other to do better, it's awesome.
As for the songs on there? Well, pretty much all of them are Lizzy standards, namely classics.
Also rans: Iron Maiden's Live After Death and Queen's Live Magic (despite being heavily doctored).
Vance Macdonald—Disclaimer: I am not particularly fond of live albums, so my opinion surely counts for naught. The only live albums I tend to enjoy typically stretch the definition of "live"—they are either performed in a tightly-controlled environment (Unplugged, Austin City Limits, etc.) or they are highly over-produced after the fact, even overdubbed (if I'm using that term correctly). The only other exception would be an "event" album, such as a unique combination of artists, or a special moment in history. My initial thought was an event album: Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison. And I hope someone else writes about that one, because I'm going with Nirvana's Unplugged in New York.
I am a much bigger Johnny Cash fan than Nirvana fan, but that is one of the reasons why I'm going with Nirvana. That is, I can't think of another artist where I listen to their live album more than any other album (and in this case, more than all of their other albums combined). Not only do I love the sound they create on this (mostly) acoustic album, but I think it demonstrates Cobain's songwriting genius in a way that might have been easily missed otherwise.
Jeff Lewis—I am not qualified to determine which is the best live album, but my favorite live albums are Curtis Mayfield's Curtis/Live and Primus's Suck On This, Hugh Masekela's Hope and Bootsy's Rubber Band Live in Louisville, which are filled with songs that match or exceed the studio versions. I never saw Curtis live, but Primus, Masekela and Bootsy all excel on stage, so I probably am biased towards their live stuff.
As a kid I liked Cheap Trick Live At Budakon and later—after the band was past it's prime—I listed to The Untouchables A Decade of Dance: Live quite a lot. I also like a lot of live jazz albums, but I don't think that should count in this discussion.
Martell—I had a lot of candidates for this one, and I was able to narrow it down to five finalists. Just like practically everyone else, I considered the Unplugged series first—not just the aforementioned album by Nirvana, but also the equally amazing (and foreboding) set played by Alice In Chains. Like Cobain, lead singer Layne Staley died shortly after the performance, and even though he was completely wrecked by heroin at the time, he left his fans an album for the ages.
But for some reason, the whole Unplugged phenomenon feels a little contrived to me. After the success of Eric Clapton's appearance showed MTV just how well an album-version of the show would sell, it seemed like every other appearance was done with the album in mind. Don't get me wrong—I love the Nirvana and Alice In Chains sessions, and am thankful to have them both available to me. But as far as the spirit of the "live" album goes, I feel like MTV stole part of that away. So these two fantastic discs only made my top five.
Another finalist that immediately jumped to mind was Oingo Boingo's Farewell disc, from their 1995 Halloween concert (which I've mentioned more than once as being my favorite show I've ever attended). But I've probably given that event enough space elsewhere on the site, so let's move on...
My next finalist was another legendary Los Angeles band from the 80s. Back in 1988, X played at the Whisky in support of their latest album See How We Are, and the concert was released as the disc Live at the Whisky A Go-Go on the Fabulous Sunset Strip. It is just an amazing session, especially considering that Billy Zoom had just left the band and they were still breaking in new guitarist Tony Gilkyson. Remarkably, most of the songs sound better here than on the original albums. Still, the absence of Zoom (as well as "4th of July," my favorite song off See How We Are) always leaves me wanting just a little bit more when I listen to this album.
Which brings me to my winner. Once again, I've gone back to the 80s, and this time I've come back with the two live albums I've listened to the most in my life. This set includes songs from four different tours spanning 1980 to 1986, and even though most of the music is more than 20 years old now, it still stands the test of time in my book. Those live albums are Joe Jackson's Live 1980/86.
Aside from being a spectacular collection of music, those albums hold a special place in my heart for another reason. A number of years back, when I was still trying to convince my wife that I was worth her time, I took her on a day trip to San Diego, so she could experience what a typical day in my life was like. That day turned out to be the turning point in our relationship.
We often look back on that day and reminisce about all the different things we did, about how everything just came together perfectly. But one thing we haven't talked about in a long time happened just at the beginning of the day, right as we were starting our trip. We got in the car and I asked my wife-to-be what type of music she listened to. She wouldn't really commit to a genre, so I asked her who was in her CD player right now. She responded, "Joe Jackson." So I hit a few buttons on my CD player and this album began playing. It was exactly the same album she had in her car. It turned out to be an auspicious beginning to a most excellent day, and for me, it's the tiebreaker when it comes to thinking about what my favorite live album is.
To submit a topic for The Voices of Reason, or to be added to the VoR Shout Out List, send an e-mail to martell@babblog.com.
