Live music recodings: yes or no?

I like live recordings if the interpretation is different enough from the studio version that I want both or when the recording quality is good. For example, MTV Unplugged where they do acoustic versions with studio quality live, or when it's a rare cover that can only be found in live versions (e.g. Pearl Jam doing the Doors' Break on Through) but if the quality is bad and the audience is too prominent I don't like them much either.

That's a good point about interpretation. I actually have one of those MTV unplugged CDs and Eric Clapton's acoustic "Layla" is amazing. It is much more meloncholy. Plus, the audience is very quiet.

I'm with you Boomer - live albums generally annoy me, though I have bought one or two.

For me it's more about the recording process. With a 'proper' studio album you get what the group, producer, engineer and mixer spent hours constructing, arguing over and refining. With live recordings it's pot luck. The sound is just 'better'. I love watching 'Classic Albums' when the producer is at the mixing desk isolating individual parts on a 48 track desk and you see the complexity of the building blocks that make up a finished recording.

Sure, live has its positives, but as a lover of 'sound' studio recordings have it beat.

PS Best live album ever? 801 Live. True!

That's interesting, hingehead. I don't know anything about studio production but today while we were driving in Mr. B's car a Lenny Kravitz CD came up (I think it was "Five") and I was thinking about how I would probably really like the songs is they weren't so....... ummmmm.... synthethetic. I think I would like it more if it was a bit.... ragged or raw sounding. It sounded so manufactured that it was really unappealing. Then again, maybe it was just my mood at the time.

What is it about 801 Live that makes it so good? What is different about it?

Hi Boomerang - I was going to start off with 'great sound, great songs, great musicians' and then waffle on mindlessly - but I thought I'd do some research and I'm now very glad you asked the question because I learnt a lot from the Wikipedia entry on the album: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/801_(band)

It was the first live album to use DI!!!

I think the other great thing about it was that I hadn't had much, or any, exposure to the studio versions of the tracks, and where I had the live versions were brilliant adaptations/innovations. As an example Brian Eno's original 'Baby's on Fire' is a slow paced menacing number whereas 801's is a rollocking ball blaster that you'd be happy to drive off a cliff to. I just love Bill McCormick's tasteful bass-playing in RongWrong merging into more frenetic quasi-funkentwhistle playing in Sombre Reptiles.

Even having the crowd flange into the intro of Diamondhead is live studio trickery.

Reading the pedigrees of the members (courtesy of that wikipedia link) is amazing. Some of the players were the products of cross-cultural unions, Eno was from another planet, and most had very distinguished musical CVs pre and post 801.

I even found free illegal download of the album (my vinyl can stay in its pristine cover!)

http://zambonisoundtracks.blogspot.com/2008/11/801-801-live-1976.html

And I know what you mean about about 'too synthetic over production' - I also find that albums where one multi-instrumentalist plays all or most of the parts can often lack a dimension that you can't quite put your finger on.

I think I have a love of sound that isn't necessarily musical. That tortured guitar in Radiohead's chorus of Creep is just inspired. Clearly there was too much Fripp, Eno, Bowie in my early musical education.

Depends on the recording. There's a Black Crowes album, live, where they perform Led Zeppelin songs with Jimmy Page, it's incredible. And a couple of the MTV Unplugged cds I have too...Alice in Chains, I love the sound.

So overall, yes, I like live recordings. Unless it's a butchered, noisy recording.

Oh my goodness if it isn't Mr. Doo Hoo! I thought you must have gotten married or something since I haven't seen you in so long.

Did you get married or something?

Interesting that we all seem to agree on the "unplugged" live stuff. I haven't heard the Black Crowes playing Zep but I imagine that wasn't just a round of applause at the end of the song but that there was some Freebird-style hooting going on.



Hingehead, what is DI?

I'm going to try to give that link a listen tomorrow when life returns to normalish.

DI = Direct Injection

So all the instruments were recorded through the mixing desk, rather than the, up to then, standard of using judiciously placed mic's to pick up what was coming out of the PA or out of individual instrument amps which wouldcausing bleeding and leakage e.g. A mic on the bass amp would pick up some drums and some vocals and guitar from the monitors. Recording using DI through the FOH desk on to multi track gives you more control of the final recording mix and cleaner individual tracks. I imagine there was a bit of post-recording processing done on some of the tracks (like flanging the crowd noise).

I've only got two 'unpluggeds' - Clapton and Nirvana. Musical curiosities more than regular favourites.