The best live albums ever!

[greenman]

Agharta is a good one. Also the best part of Miles' Live/Evil comes live from the Cellar Door in Washington DC, with some tasty post-production by Teo Macero. How can you go wrong with both Keith Jarrett and John McLaughlin onboard?

You could argue really almost everything from that era is "live" ala Can being edited studio jams, personally I tend to preffer "studio live" to the "live live" from the earlier fusion days but the reverse from the latter years, especially Dark Magus....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gFIi--jHyk

By the same kind of token I think you can really see the appeal of post Barret pre Darkside Floyd to the likes of Jon Peel best on the live disk of Ummagumma...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoTRmyjoyrE

[Shit Good Nose]

Dark Magus

I love Agharta and Pangaea, but Dark Magus is an absolute fucking monster.  The grooves on it...

[greenman]

That's really the album to listen to for mid 70's funky Miles IMHO, the two Japanese live albums actually feel like their moving towards something a bit more atmospheric that we didn't get too see much of(part of Get Up With It I spose like He Loved Him Madly) before he retired.

[jobotic]

I knew this would come up. I have it, but alas no record player currently. Can't remember much about it. When I was 18 my mate out them on in Whitstable and sadly I can't remember much about that either. Ffs.

[NoSleep]

He Loved Him Madly

Miles' tribute to the then recently departed Duke Ellington (Get Up With It was dedicated to Duke). Reminds me...

Duke Ellington at Fargo, 1940 Live is remarkable that that it even exists, let alone being a record of possibly the greatest band that has ever existed at their very peak. The greatest band that has ever existed playing at dance date (not some high-faluting sit-down concert business). And recorded to 78 rpm discs by a couple of fans (tape didn't exist) just for the sheer hell of it; this recording shouldn't exist. And it's pretty good quality sound. Some technical issues where tracks come in after they have already started or end before they're finished, or the two guys recording decide something is not worth recording. An early portion of the gig (about the first half hour) you can hear that the the gig is being broadcast by a local radio station, the announcer clearly audible and bidding people to come down to the venue for the rest of the evening.

[Sebastian Cobb]

^ Along similar lines (small intimate club), Donny Hathaway Live and Curtis Mayfield's Curtis/Live! - both brill.

Curtis' Monterey performance is excellent as well.

[NoSleep]

You mean Otis Redding.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Yeah, I do. Shit.

[NoSleep]

The band Noel Redding (aka Bob Dylan's grandmother) was in were very good at Monterey, too; set the place (well, a guitar) on fire.

[A Car With No Doors]

Probably an obvious one, but Agharta by Miles Davis is just staggering. The energy, the grooves, the individual performances... I'd love to be more eloquent but the music speaks for itself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crpJgZxqMcg

Everything the 1973-75 Miles band released is fantastic. Cranking up the recent Japanese CD reissues of the original Agharta/Pangaea mixes is an astounding experience.  What a group, and it makes you dream, as greenman suggested, what they might have done had Miles not been so ill. Still, it's hard to not be grateful for what we got, because it's the best.

[fatguyranting]

Kiss Alive/Kiss Alive II

[Norton Canes]

Revolting Cocks - Live! You Goddamned Son of a Bitch

[SteveDave]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp3zaeOyL7Q
The original lineup at the top of their game.

Recorded on the actual day of my birth. Freaked my nut out when I bought it 18 years later.

The only live show I've been at that was turned into a live LP was Os Mutantes at the Barbican in 2006. What you don't get on the recording is Julian Barrett being told off for dancing.

[jobotic]

It's BB KIng - Live at The Regal.

Everyone knows that.

[SpiderChrist]

Always loved Live And Dangerous, almost as much as the overdubs arguments that surround it.

[SpiderChrist]

And Van's It's Too Late To Stop Now is jolly good.

Oh yeah, big shout for Wilco's Kicking Television - recorded in their hometown over two four nights, it's a pretty special album.

[dex]

Bob Marley & The Wailers Babylon By Bus.

[sevendaughters]

I like the ones that document a disaster like Metallic KO by The Stooges and 23 Minutes Over Brussels by Suicide. There's a live single by Anal Cunt which is basically someone battering the singer at a gig.

[NoSleep]

That reminds me. I have an unofficial recording of Sun Ra from '71 (acquired from dimeadozen.org) that features one track entitled "The Curse Of Sun Ra", as they pulled the power on him; so he rails against the power(s) that be and puts a curse on LA for their efforts to shut him down. Found this passage about the recording:

http://nuvoid.blogspot.com/2010/01/sun-ra-sunday_17.html

Apparently, the custodians shut off the lights a short time after, as the tape next picks up in the middle of "The Curse." And, wow, Sun Ra is pissed off! For more than five minutes, Sonny rains down sheets of radioactive organ and angrily rants about darkness and light, race and righteousness:

    "The darkness means nothing to you. It's my home. And my people are dark and black....there's nothing but darkness anyway and there's no escape for white, yellow, brown or black for what I represent. And you can believe it if you want to or not; I don't care! This planet needs me! I don't need it!...You cannot afford to take a chance. I'm not playing with anything, I'm not Christ, I'm not righteous, I'm so evil...I'll destroy the whole planet! I'm here to do something! I'm a product of nature! I don't care anything about the governments of man, I don't care anything about anyone who is not true and sincere. There is no excuse for any man to mistreat another man. I will not tolerate it! I don't care if you're the strongest government on the face of the earth, you are a part of nature!...Do not ever turn the lights out on me! You may be ever so light, but you don't own anything! You are here by the grace of the god you say you worship!... You will wake up! Black people don't need to wake up, they got me -- you don't have nothin'!"


Sun Ra ends with an explicit threat: "The birds don't have to stop playing at one o'clock; why should I? You just had one earthquake...you might expect another!" Whoah. This followed by an eerie minute or so of the audience exiting the auditorium, muttering in stunned disbelief; meanwhile some woman invites everyone to meet "at 4506 Southwest" for further consciousness-raising experiences. The tape concludes with Dr. Reggie Scott's monologue (over Sun Ra music), in which he recalls an "embarrassing evening for what could have been a perfect evening." In a coolly angry voice, Dr. Scott laments:


    "Sun Ra and his band never played better. The crowd never responded better. The people loved and begged for more. But it was ended; ended in another kind of tragic commentary on sensitivity, on responsibility, on man's -- black man's -- failure to share the artistic point of view, share the love of art with the artist...The crowd hungered for more, but was not permitted. It was embarrassing to people who love and worship the mighty Sun Ra. The band wanted to play. Sun Ra wanted to play. The audience wanted more...The crowd was at a feverish pitch to hear more Sun Ra and his Intergalactic Infinity Arkestra but it was brought to a halt by the powers that be."


Dr. Scott goes to on to describe the "furious" Sun Ra cursing the City of Los Angeles and concludes: "Sun Ra remains the myth. Sun Ra remains the puzzle. Sun Ra remains undisputed. Sun Ra can only be interpreted in one of two ways: You either go into the galaxy with him or stay left behind. It was that kind of evening. It was that kind of night..." Indeed.

[NoSleep]

And talking of Sun Ra There's a double CD set by him (Sun Ra and his 2000 Myth Science Arkestra), entitled Live In London 1990 that was recorded at the Mean Fiddler and you can clearly hear me shout "Yes!" from the audience as they begin to play "Shadow World".

And there's also the Kevin Ayers & The Whole World CD Hyde Park Free Concert 1970 that I attended also (band consisted of Robert Wyatt on drums, Mike Oldfield on guitar, Lol Coxhill on sax and David Bedford on keyboards, Mr Ayers on bass and vocals; first gig I attended after returning from Australia. Edgar Broughton (great!) and Pink Floyd (bit boring: Atom Heart Mother) played later the same day.