1980, I had just got into The Kinks, they released a double live album, I think it was available for a special discount price, maybe 4.49. Very exciting, picked it up at Spillers in Cardiff, it was called One for the Road.
It’s terrible. Mainly supporting the dreadful Low Budget album, but also arranging their earlier classics in a manner that would suit US arenas.
Saw them live a year later at Liverpool Empire, that show was much better
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_for_the_Road_(The_Kinks_album)
Amusing:
“In his 1980 review of the album for Smash Hits, David Hepworth said that the album was “as convincing an argument for banning live albums as you’ll find” “
I have always thought that Joe Walsh You Can’t Argue With A Sick Mind was terrible and assumed it was a contractual obligation before joining the Eagles. It seems to get well reviewed though, so maybe i should listen to it again.
Without showing all my workings from the forthcoming Every Double Live Album from the Seventies thread, Elvis Aloha Live from Hawaii is a desperately poor album, indicative of his final decline.
The second disc of Song Remains The Same has much that is poor/challenging for all but the most diehard zephead: a 30-min Dazed and Confused half of which is Page tunelessly attacking his guitar, Moby Dick and then a poor take on Stairway to Heaven (the How the West Was Won version is much better).
I was thinking about SRTS. The version of Since I’ve Been Loving You is somewhat compromised by the fact that the guitar solo is obviously dropped in later in some studio.
Is SIBLY actually on the album though?
Not on the original double vinyl or CD – added to the subsequent remasters.
Jimmy Page has remastered something?! Huge if true! 😁😉
Actually I was thinking of the film and assumed it’s on the album.
You haven’t heard the album??
Underwhelmed by the film so never bothered.
My sister had the Bay City Rollers live album. It’s dreadful. My horrible mates and I used to play it and roll around the floor holding our sides with mirth, much to her fury.
Who’s Last wasn’t much cop – there were times when it sounded strained and bored like they were going through the motions
(they probably were, but intended to be the swansong, a bit of effort wouldn’t have hurt)
Sid Sings – bad performances, terrible sound quality.
A bit obscure perhaps, but “Fin” by The Monochrome Set is a collection of badly recorded and mostly crappily played live versions of songs from gigs between 1979 to 1985. To say it’s a waste of money would be an understatement. It was released about a year after the band first split and apparently el Records put it out just because they wanted to “build up some catalogue,” which shows an awesome level of disregard for what was always going to be a niche market anyway.
The Stones Still Life was a much regretted purchase in 1981, thin and tinny versions of Some Girls era songs and for an encore they batter Satisfaction and leave it crumpled on the floor. Lots of running from one side of stadium stage to other in skateboard pads from our Mick in the photos.
Their Live in Roundhay Park album from the same tour is even more woeful.
We saw them at Ashton Gate that year – my memory of it is that it was ok, but the clearest recollection is that Robert Plant was sat a few rows behind us.
They recently released Live at Wembley from the same tour, I was at one of those shows. Actually I quite like it, and I don’t mind the original Still Life. It’s nowhere near their best live album but I probably prefer it to the double Love You Live album (but Live at El Mocambo is good). I have the Leeds show but don’t think I have listened to it
Out also on dvd-the show I saw the stones at
The Roundhay Park actual gig was rather jolly, I thought, but we had sneaked in a fair old bit of hooch. In fact, I think I lost the plot little after Joe Jackson, who was superb, it being around the time of Night and Day. We strayed into a Chapeltown pub on the way home, then fascinated by what was going on at the small stage at the end of the room. Let’s say a link to the banana thread wouldn’t have been amiss, which was a little unexpected.
Enjoyed the gig hugely. Missing the last bus to Mcr and overnighting in the coach station not so much.
Dreadful album – and associated gig wasn’t much better (saw them at Roundhay Park and was underwhelmed…)
Black Sabbath -Live at Last, A horrible muddy noise released without permission by a former manager. It was so shoddy that the credits managed to misspell Ozzie as ‘Ossie’.
Released on NEMS, a strong contender for the cheapest and tackiest record label of the 70s, and competition was strong.
ver Giant’s ‘Playing the Fool’ got a vote on the other thread. Gentle Giant Live Rome 1974 gets a vote on this one. It’s remarkable to find that it’s an official release. The mixing of the instruments .. well.. it’s possible that it didn’t happen at all. It would be believable that whoever recorded it never actually played it back before committing it to disc. This would explain how, at one point, an alarm clock seems to go off on the mixing disc – yes, really – and rattles away at the front of the mix, while Derek Shulman battles away in the background. And when I say there are long quiet bits where you suspect there’s been a power cut, I mean longer than a minute, which is what it takes for your ear to adjust and realise that there’s actually a gig going on somewhere in there.
Lets not pretend that the material is without its faults either. Now, I’m no slouch when it comes to enjoying the Advent of Panurge hitmakers, but even I baulk at a ‘recorder quartet solo’ (sic), or the 27 minute segue of Nothing at All to Plain Truth, woven together by the very epitome of directionless noodling. Maybe that’s why the sound engineers needed an alarm clock.
I’ve never heard it, Chesh – and, based on your review, I won’t be seeking it out any time soon…
Playing the Fool has a nice re-release which sounds pretty good to me. Maybe they tarted it up a bit.
Playing the Fool was always pretty good. But some of their other live releases have been little more than tarted-up bootlegs. Sounds like Live Rome 1974 might be one of those…
… without having been tarted up.
I am probably alone in considering Humble Pie’s “Rocking’ The Fillmore” a self-indulgent snooze fest that would have been improved by making it – say – a single. No, not a single album, a single.
A DNF for me but is it that 20 min blues rock is just not my thing and others think it amazing?
I’m with you Skirky. Had it sold it.
Sides 2 and 3 are indeed a snooze fest. But as Steve would have it, 1 & 4 are a “real gas”.
I don’t think it’s crap but I am going to add The Eagles Hell Freezes Over because it’s clearly had so much done to it after being recorded it’s barely a live album.
I love Peter Gabriel but “… Plays Live” is a similar beast. I think he admitted as much too.
“Play Once” morelike amirite
“Dylan and the Dead” is a notorious stinker.
Many dislike Dylan’s “ live at the Budokan”, and the cabaret-style versions of many classics. In its favour, they do sound like his best known songs, but with a reggae beat, or a bit of a violin solo, etc. many would love a set like that by Dylan now.
Indeed about D and the Dead. Was listening to the recent Budokan release the other day, sounds pretty good to me
I had a live Curtis Knight featuring Jimi Hendrix album which was utterly wretched and if Jimi was within 5 miles off the venue there’s no sign of it on the vinyl.
Haven’t we akcready covered this topic in Mr. Wheaty’s thread?
No shortage of shit hitting the fans out there, though. I’d nominate the risible Oy Vey Baby by Tinnitus Machine.
Shit Hitting The Fans is a superb title for a live album
Arf!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shit_Hits_the_Fans
Possibly a controversial opinion but I really didn’t like ‘Springsteen on Broadway’. And I love The Boss.
I went to see it and it was an incredible evening. Have not wanted to watch or listen to any recording to just leave it like that in my memory
I didn’t finish watching it on Netflix for some reason even though I enjoyed the bits I saw. I think it lost something by not being in the room.
From memory, I was really disappointed it was so sweary. Not big and not clever…
No, he isn’t, is he? (Boom-tish!)
Oh, can’t say I noticed but am not averse to the odd curse word leaving my mouth most days.
I saw them in Buffalo in 2009 which turned out to be Clarence Clemons’ last show. During Growin’ Up he always told a hugely exaggerated, supernatural story about how they first met. This one had the punchline “And we ended up in fuckin’ Buffalo” (it’s a bit of a dump). You probably have to hear it but it brought the house down
Weren’t a lot of live albums used as way of fulfilling contractual obligations? I’d be genuinely interested to know of any good ones – they always sound like great fun for the people who were actually there.
Check the other thread on double live albums. For me the best standalone as a valuable addition to an act’s discography, often containing songs not found elsewhere or definitive versions of previously recorded ones.
Live at Leeds, Time Fades Away, Nirvana Unplugged in New York being single album examples.
You can add ‘Learning to Flinch’, Warren Zevons standalone solo album to that list.
A single album, mind. As was Graham Parker’s Live Alone In America, and Richard Thompson’s Small Town Romance, the trirumvirate of superlative live albums by singers often accompanied by bands.
For avoidance of doubt: are we still discussing “crap live albums”?
Stupidity by Dr Feelgood. There.
I like your thinking.
Sadly, the post-line-up-implosion (Fripp-Burrell-Wallace-Collins) live album that is Earthbound by the mighty King Crimson was a sonic abomination on first release – it sounded as if it was recorded on a mono cassette machine with low grade batteries, the cheapest tape available and a microphone from the 1920s. From three fields away on the other side of the hill*.
More recent sonic improvements have revealed the interplay of the musicians more fully, turning it into a useful document of a band of lunatics wringing everything they could from the music in the midst of a grinding tour of the USA, which has lent it a degree of nostalgic quality, so I’m not sure if it counts really.
At the time it was, despite being a bargain basement release, a huge disappointment to those of us unable to persuade our parents to let us go and see the band play live because of their perceived risk of their offspring suffering permanent hearing damage.
Akshally it was “captured live on an Ampex stereo cassette fed from a Kelsey Morris custom built mixer … in the rain from the back of a Volkswagen truck.”
Grrrooooooonnnnnnn…
It is the birth of hardcore. Or something. A horrible racket that’s useful for clearing out unwanted guests. Also inexplicably enjoyable, and one the very few honest live albums. That version of Schizoid… burning intensity…
I really liked it when I was at school, years before I found out that it was supposed to be a “sonic abomination”…
Yeah, me too. I had the first album and my mate Chris had that plus Poseidon. He had more pocket money than me, and grabbed a copy of Earthbound when it came out (as a cheapie) – I borrowed it and immersed myself in it under my dad’s headphones. If there had been an 11 on the amp, it would have been employed. Totally atmospheric, like a gig on Jupiter in an acid storm under leaden skies rent with electricity.
Why, Foxy, that’s … beautiful! *snurfle*
Sydney Devine – Live From The City Hall Glasgow
Not so divine then.
We were listening to Radio Clyde one weekend & the bold Sydney came on, singing The Road & the Miles to Dundee. On it’s finishing, the DJ (who I believe was a fairly well known Glasgow lawyer) opened, “Well, that must be the flattest road to Dundee!”
The 13th Floor Elevators’ “Live” has rarely been equalled for shoddiness. It’s not live at all, but an ill-mastered collection of previously released tracks and dud out-takes interspersed with a ridiculous Beatlemania-style screaming audience. On the cover it claims to be “EXCITEMENT PERSONIFIED.”
It being the cheapest available original IA pressing, I bought it mail order, and was gutted. The Kinks Live At Kelvin Hall springs to mind.
I’ve never bothered listening to it, but a review in a US magazine reviewed Bachman Turner Overdrive’s album “Live! Live! Live!” as follows (full review):
“Ya coulda fooled Me! Me! Me!”
Very good. But not as good as that review (although maybe the story I read somewhere is apocryphal) of Yes’s self-titled album that supposedly, in the format of “Artist. Album Title. Review”, read “Yes. Yes. No.”
None more pithy.
I heard it was “Yes. Yes. Maybe”.
“Shit sandwich”
“None more apocryphal”