What happened to the live album?

[harry_seldon]

I was on Digg, and saw an interesting thread: What happened to the live album? Many of the comments revolve around: popular artists can't pull it off because of the reliance on gear over skill.

Is there a deeper answer? My gut reaction is the death of the AOR radio format.

[Frisbieinstein]

Originally Posted by harry_seldon

I was on Digg, and saw an interesting thread: What happened to the live album? Many of the comments revolve around: popular artists can't pull it off because of the reliance on gear over skill.

Is there a deeper answer? My gut reaction is the death of the AOR radio format.

In modern pop the purpose of the live performance is to duplicate the recording. So a live album makes no sense.

[robertshaw]

Live At Fillmore East, Frampton comes Alive, KI$$ Alive II, No Sleep Til Hammersmith, Live 'bootleg', Before the Flood, Live at Leeds, All the World's a Stage, Live: Blow Your Face Out , Get Yer Ya Ya's Out, Two for the show, Strangers in the Night, Live and Dangerous, Made in Japan, Live at Last, Live at Carnegie Hall, Live at Pompeii, Live At The Apollo, Band of Gypsies, Live At Folsom Prison, Live At Fillmore West, Live At San Quentin, , If You Want Blood, You've Got It !!!!!!!!

[Drumsound]

Originally Posted by harry_seldon

I was on Digg, and saw an interesting thread: What happened to the live album? Many of the comments revolve around: popular artists can't pull it off because of the reliance on gear over skill.

Is there a deeper answer? My gut reaction is the death of the AOR radio format.

More often you see live DVDs instead.

[jayfrigo]

Originally Posted by Drumsound

More often you see live DVDs instead.

Yup, they're just DVDs now. In addition, many live performances end up as broadcast-only, for cable "on-demand" or on networks like Palladia etc. We do a lot of this kind of work.

We've also been doing DVDs that include a CD more and more often. It's still marketed mainly as a DVD, but there is a traditional "live album" version included. The CDs have abbreviated spacings as compared to the DVDs which have various things in-between songs that would make no sense on the CD. In this respect, they're pretty much just like the old live albums. Sometimes the songs are a bit different too, with perhaps one on the DVD that's not on the CD, and a then a couple extra "bonus tracks" on the CD.

[Teddy Ray]

Originally Posted by robertshaw

Live At Fillmore East, Frampton comes Alive, KI$$ Alive II, No Sleep Til Hammersmith, Live 'bootleg', Before the Flood, Live at Leeds, All the World's a Stage, Live: Blow Your Face Out , Get Yer Ya Ya's Out, Two for the show, Strangers in the Night, Live and Dangerous, Made in Japan, Live at Last, Live at Carnegie Hall, Live at Pompeii, Live At The Apollo, Band of Gypsies, Live At Folsom Prison, Live At Fillmore West, Live At San Quentin, , If You Want Blood, You've Got It !!!!!!!!

apparently you didn't read the first post.

he was saying "what happened to the live album?" IE wondering why there were no longer live albums being made.

and to answer the OP

Wilco has done several, all outstanding.

[AntillesSound]

The White Stripes seem to put one out every few years now that I think about it.

And though its not the same thing [ie-NEW] as they are one of the greatest live bands of all time, but I'm currently working on a new Grateful Dead 2 CD live set. Hampton 89 baby.

[Shiny Beast]

I guess we're talking about rock/pop/hiphop/whatever...

Many, many current jazz and classical albums are live. They're on a very different mission from trying to reproduce a studio album live.

I do wish more indie artists were trying live albums (well, maybe they are but under my radar).

[Whitecat]

This approach is interesting:

Concert Live - Home

You never hear about these "live albums" because they're not widely released, but if you go to a gig, you can have the disc there and then. Or later, as the case may be. I went to see Jimmy Eat World at Brixton Academy a couple years ago when those guys were doing the recording. I didn't pre-order for collection at the show because I wanted to see how the show was, first. Since it was good, I ordered afterwards. Nice little souvenir.

No edits or overdubs, and obviously they are not really (post) "mixed" or "mastered" either (would love to hear from anyone involved in the production though if anyone's hanging about here) - I'm guessing it's pretty much FOH mix live to PTHD with a limiter strapped across the 2-buss and that's it. But it sounds alright for what it is.

[whquade]

That Live at Abbey Road program is pretty neat. With programs like that and the DVD format, it's only natural that live albums are not as popular. Maybe live albums today don't have the commercial draw like they used to have. Record companies get this feedback and are less prompt to incite new releases.

I think people are becoming more visual about music in general anyways. Also, the sonics on a mastered studio album are usually days away from a live captured performance. I think people almost need to see the performance to make up for the bias towards the polished sounds of studio recordings. This last part is pure speculation. Maybe the whole thing.

[theblue1]

Originally Posted by harry_seldon

I was on Digg, and saw an interesting thread: What happened to the live album? Many of the comments revolve around: popular artists can't pull it off because of the reliance on gear over skill.

Is there a deeper answer? My gut reaction is the death of the AOR radio format.

Well, live albums got out of hand back in the 70s and 80s.


The idea of a live album started off as a way to hopefully capture the excitement of a given band's live performance. (Old-timers will remember the hideous sounding "Got Live If You Want It," the early or mid 60s live Stones record that sounded oddly sped up and where the music was all but drowned out by the screams of teen age girls who obviously thought they were at a Herman's Hermits concert.)

But by the mid-70s, a lot of the big bands had moved into an ego space where they apparently wanted to recreate the sound of their multitrack studio masterpieces as closely as possible -- and if the live recording was compromised, they'd take it into the studio to add new parts and remove problem parts.

This was one of the reasons why new, heavily infrastructured venues like Budokan popped up: they offered integrated mega-channel synched multitrack rigs and video production facilities.

Bands could create 'studio perfect' simulations of live performance.

[Shiny Beast]

Speaking of reproducing a studio album live, the best concert I ever saw to accomplish this, bar none, was March 23, 1973 at the Park Center in Charlotte, NC.

Pink Floyd. The Dark Side of the Moon tour. The second half of the show was the album played exactly as recorded. I had bought the album a week before and had already almost worn it out.

It was perfection, and they played it live, dammit, with only the quad sound effects being pre-recorded. With all the technological advances in the the nearly 40 years since, nothing I've seen has come close to the sound and vision of that concert. Including the Floyd itself in later years.

16 years old at the time. It was one of those life-changing events.

[digibiu]

They all lipsync, so, the studio album, IS the live album

[Drum9uy]

Jill Scott Experience and Live in Paris (2nd of which is available with video as well) are amazing live albums as she makes a personal commitment to always have live musicians, and they re-orchestrate all the songs every time they're on tour.

[blim]

The decline of the live album is something to be welcomed. How many good live albums were ever recorded? Not many.

On the other hand, the other night I was browsing through Napster, and I came across Frampton Comes Alive. That's right, that big fat embarrassing dinosaur of an album that all of us post-punk indie boys have held up as the highest (or more accurately lowest) example of the bloat and flab of the major label-controlled record industry. This should be campy and fun, I thought. So I started to play it. And I noticed that every beat and every note was perfectly in place and perfectly registered. It occurred to me that there was probably not a single band that could pull off eighty minutes of flaw-free live music today. (Wilco, maybe.)

[Teddy Ray]

Tom Waits Glitter and Doom is another great live one...


(Nighthawks at the Diner is an all time favorite)

[Greg B]

I still see lots of live albums, and I make lots of live albums for artists. Most bands cheat a little by fixing a few things after tracking, but I think it still counts as "live".

I think the purpose of a live album should be to create that vibe you get when musicians play together in the same place at the same time. A little studio cheating is ok as long as it doesn't hurt that vibe, but of course it's always impressive when you can say that a recording has absolutely no edits or redos.

Most modern pop music is born in studios with hired studio musicians, as opposed to a group of friends jamming in a garage, so it makes sense that you don't see live Hillary Duff jam-session CDs. Her fans don't know the difference anyway. They don't notice all the lip sinking going on in the "live" concerts.

[Teddy Ray]

oh yeah..

Glitter And Doom: Tom Waits In Concert : NPR

[Drum9uy]

speaking of post-tweaks, most contemporary gospel is live with overdubs

[icebox]

Oceansize released a box set last year of them playing all 3 of their full length albums on 3 different nights at a club in England and it's awesome! Great musicianship. They filmed it as well so the box set has 3 cd's and 3 dvd's. You can see some of them here....

Oceansize NEW ALBUM RELEASED IN SEPTEMBER on MySpace Music - Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Videos

[bongo]

I recorded a pretty impressive live CD with no fixes.

[David C.]

Yes and Jethro Tull's live shows always sounded just like their albums in the 70's.

It's funny, I heard Brittney Spears canceled a tour because she hurt her knee. (You mean she can't still fake sing?)

I guess that's it, when a lot of modern shows are about dancing more than musical performances, what's the point of a live album?

[RCM - Ronan]

Hardly any big artists do real live albums or DVDs anymore. There is so much stuff fixed in post production now. I think this kills the energy and excitement of live albums.

[Ampex 354]

Originally Posted by theblue1

Well, live albums got out of hand back in the 70s and 80s.


The idea of a live album started off as a way to hopefully capture the excitement of a given band's live performance. (Old-timers will remember the hideous sounding "Got Live If You Want It," the early or mid 60s live Stones record that sounded oddly sped up and where the music was all but drowned out by the screams of teen age girls who obviously thought they were at a Herman's Hermits concert.)

Chess released a Chuck Berry LP in the early 1960s that was nothing more than muddy dubs of the already-released studio recordings of the songs, with overdubbed applause/screams/reaction sounds! Someone gave me a copy of it in a stack of other LPs....I got rid of it quick.

[Jon Estes]

+ 1 for Wilco. "Kicking Television" as well as the new live DVD "Ashes Of American Flags" are incredible.

[MultitrakMindset]

I think maybe one of the answers is that so much of the music is still tired old hip hop and electronic pop music (not that all of it is bad though). When most of the sound is coming from samples being triggered, how interesting can it really be to hear mostly the same thing over again with some applause added?

But then as far as the true artists out there that actually do more than just sing, I'm not really sure why there doesn't even seem to be that many live albums coming from that group either. It would seem to make sense for those artists to have more live albums than ever before, since it would promote concerts, and concerts as we know are becoming the big money maker more and more in this digital mp3 age.

[joeq]

Originally Posted by Drumsound

More often you see live DVDs instead.

Just watched "Jeff Beck performing this week live at Ronnie Scott's" thumbsup There are so many great concert DVDs.

I would have to say the live album is alive and well.

Better, even because so many of the "classic" live albums were full of punches and overdubs, and this seemed to be quite untouched. It's a much more honest documentation than in the past.


You get the 'live album' and a video, and the artist gets a level of promotion for his show that is far more compelling than a sound-only live recording. Of course it is mainly artists with real skill, and whose music is created in the "now" who come across well in such a format.

Acts that rely on spectacle or careful reproduction of their studio product make less interesting DVDs. The spectacle doesn't really fit on the small screen and reproduction of the studio product in a live setting is only impressive to those who are there in the live setting.

[T'Mershi Duween]

Frank Zappa defintely blurred the line between "live" and "studio" recording.

Sometimes edits would include both in the same song.

A very great discography of "live" recordings he made. Sonically better than most anything out there too.

[harry_seldon]

Has there actually been a popular success of the live album in last ~20 years.

I can see how the concert DVD has supplanted the live album. Are there any really exceptional concert BluRay disks multichannel sound worth listening to? It is really unfortunate multichannel audio disks never took off. I suppose with the right setup, a band could record a truly exceptional live album which closely replicates the concert experience.

I always wondered why Cheap Trick Live at Budokan sounded so good. I didn't realize the facility was designed with that purpose in mind.

[sanjari]

The latest Black Crowes album was recorded infront of a live audience.