Week 6: 25 best live records of all time.

[Swish]

Had to get this one out early this week as I'll be heading to Pittsburgh in the A.M. I like it there and I can also gloat about the Eagles great victory over the Steelers yesterday. I was just freakin' awesome. Nearly as good as the Pats getting stomped by stinky Miami, but I digress.

The selection for this week would certainly rank very highly on my list, if I were to bother creating one, and I doubt I'll see many detractors this time as this is one that nearly everyone should have expected.

20) At Folsom Prison--Johnny Cash: Johnny Cash is a legend. And it’s albums like this one that make for that legend. Playing in front of a truly captive audience--prisoners, my friend, hardened criminals like the kind you see on TV--Cash pounds out a set of tunes that went lightly on the ballads and stuck to the manly stuff. Listen closely and you can hear the hair on his back growing.

Yeah, what he said.

Swish

[Auricauricle]

I like this choice, Swish. As a kid, my dad had it on 8-track (yeah, I'm a lucky forty-something year old); today, I have it on CD....Some good things do, indeed, go full circle and back again. Just might have to pull 'er out and get back "in the mud and the blood and the beer"...

[3-LockBox]

Finally, something I've actually heard from someone I've actually heard of. Didn't BB King do one of these prison things? Anyhoo, its wierd hearing such a raucus response to Folsom Prison Blues, as if they were saying, "yeah, that's me, yea death row, whoo-hoo!"

I like how loose Johnny sounds, even when he messes up, he doesn't care, because it ain't like they're gonna boo or walk out. Still a good show, and it was free...except for the part where you're in prison, it may have been a good time. The songs are appropriately sullen and bluesy, with songs about prison, missing loved ones, doing drugs, the gallows...fun stuff...all the things that allow you to see a show like this one. Many of them covers, some of these songs are rather spritely for the mayhem they protray. The recording isn't that bad for '68. He actually had another prison album out, but I don't know if I've heard it or not.

This kind of performance, warts and all, is the reason why you'd own a live album in the first place. I'd rather remember Johnny this way than some sorta quasi-alt-country rock star that he some how became in his last days.

[Swish]

. Still a good show, and it was free...except for the part where you're in prison.

Also, B.B. King did 'Live at Cook County Jail' back in 1971, no doubt inspired by J.C.'s performance in 1968.

Swishbaby

[Mr MidFi]

Just might have to pull 'er out and get back "in the mud and the blood and the beer"...

I hate to be a spoilsport, but I think one was on the San Quentin album.