What Ever Happened to the Live Album?

What Ever Happened to the Live Album?

Web video has made recorded concert albums nearly obsolete.

Posted Thursday, May 21, 2009 - 10:58pm

So is this a story worthy of a teary Coldplay-like ballad? Not quite. As I type this, I've been listening to more than a dozen bootlegged clips of that Yeah Yeah Yeahs show from Coachella off of YouTube. Having witnessed the show live, I am now able to relive it, albeit from the slightly disjointed perspective of someone else's handheld gadget. And guess what? It makes me want to see the band again—and buy their music.

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Submitted by helenmelengo on Thu, 07/09/2009 - 7:45pm.

I enjoyed the editorial. It

I enjoyed the editorial. It is very appealing. Thank you for the information. I will be back.

Submitted by rumpelstiltskin on Tue, 05/26/2009 - 10:11am.

A Great Live Album

My favorite live album of all time: Alice In Chains Unplugged.

Before I heard it, I didn't really like Alice.

Most of their studio albums are overproduced and stuck in the "heavy metal" genre. They sound like bad Metallica imitations (and Metallica is already pretty bad!).

A couple of years ago, though, I heard the Unplugged album in a grass bar in Amsterdam, and it blew me away. The beauty of the songs, the expressiveness of the singing, and the band's musicianship . . . it's right up there with Nirvana's more famous Unplugged. And it's especially chilling and poignant now that Layne Staley, Alice's lead singer, is dead.

Highly recommended, even if you THINK you don't like this band.

Submitted by Serolf Divad on Wed, 05/27/2009 - 9:38am.

Agree wholeheartedly on the

Agree wholeheartedly on the Alice unplugged album. It's excellent, and the DVD of the concert is also quote nice if you're into watching bands play. In that same vein, I'd suggest checking out Tesla's "Five Man Acoustical Jam." Tesla is something of a B-grade a hard rock act with a handful of hits (most notably "Love Song") and above-average songwriting ability. This acoustic live album spawned their other significant radio hit, an acoustic cover of the Five Man Electrical Band's hit "Signs." It's nice to watch a band pull the plug on their instruments and prove that they can entertain an audience the old fashioned way. Shows that the songs are still satisfyingly hummable when stripped to their bare essence. And it's great to watch the guitarists flexing their chops on steel string guitars, mining their instruments for new colors and tones without the benefit/crutch of amplification and distortion. The extended instrumental passages on the album are some of its best bits.

Submitted by Serolf Divad on Tue, 05/26/2009 - 9:50am.

Live Albums

There are two kinds of live albums:

1) Greatest Hits - Some live albums sell decently because they are basically another way of packaging a greatest hits collection. I'm thinking of albums such as Rush's "Exit Stage Left," Sarah Mclachlan's "Mirrorball" or Fleetwood Mac's "The Dance." On all three of these albums the track selection is excellent and the musicianship is superb, but the songs are mostly carbon copies of the album tracks. Yes there are some differences: the guitar on "A Passage to Bangkok" is fuzzier and meaner than the original Rush album track, the songs on "Mirrorball" have a slightly edgier sound than Mclahlans' original compositions, and Stevie Nicks adds a moving new intro to "Rhiannon" but by and large these are the favorites with which we are intimately familiar.

2) A whole new take - Some live albums sell well because they bring us a whole new take on the songs we've come to love. No doubt much of the success of Led Zeppelin's "Soundtrack to The Song Remains the Same" is the brilliant 26 minute version of "Dazed and Confused" that spans a whole album side.

I had a point to make... but forgot what it was. Oh well.

Submitted by Thelonious on Fri, 05/22/2009 - 5:27am.

Live albums

The biggest reason that live albums are obsolete is because most bands aren't good enough musically to play good concerts anymore. The majority of the music audience stopped caring about musical competence over 20 years ago.

Submitted by Jazzhigh on Tue, 05/26/2009 - 10:29am.

Live Albums

Thelonious is exactly right. Bands that are good enough to sound great in concert still release live albums. RUSH is an excellent example of this. I believe they release a live album after every concert tour.

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