Week 1 - 25 best live records of all time.

Well, I'm jumping back in with another list, and this could be the best I've found since the '50 Most Influential' that I started about 2 years ago and faithfully posted about each week until all 50 had been mentioned. It created a fair amount of interest and debate (remember Resident Loser?).This will last half that time, but I hope it helps to create a little excitement...well, let's say interest...around here since it's been somewhat dead of late. Here goes nothing...

# 25 The Allman Brothers Band - At the Fillmore East - haven’t had your fill of “Whipping Post,” you didn’t grow up on FM Radio. Southern Rock never quite reached its potential--unless you consider Molly Hatchet transcendent--but its roots were sharp and shaggy. Had Duane Allman lived, would he have had the power to re-route its course? As the mystics say, who knows?

This remains one of my personal favorites; Hot 'Lanta, In Memory of Elizabeth Reed...great stuff all. What say you?

Swish

Roy Buchanan: American Axe--Live in 1974

It would definately make my top 25. A classic. This might have been the first live album that I bought. Or maybe Woodstock. Good start Swish.

#25 seems too low, right off the bat. You're not going to stack the upper tier with Dick's Pick's, are ya?

In addendum:

V. Horowitz: Live and Unedited: The Historic 1965 Carnegie Hall Return Concert
Horowitz returns after a 12-year hiatus. A few missed notes here, a clunk there, but the master returns and performs in grand style, reminding fans that he hasn't finished and is by no means finished...

Mack the Knife: Ella Fitzgerald in Berlin
Exuberant, engaging and ever ebullient, Ella never disappointed and always pleased

Lotus: Santana in Japan, 1973
From the opening strains of "Going Home" throughout, Santana was a true funkmaster
daddy priest of the guitar and a serious musician whose depth never failed to astonish

Supertramp: Paris
Superbly recorded, deftly played and not a dry eye left standing.

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Originally Posted by jasn

#25 seems too low, right off the bat. You're not going to stack the upper tier with Dick's Pick's, are ya?

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Agreed. I'd have thought this to be much higher...what a great disc. I have the DTS Hi-Rez version which is truly fantastic but I'd be interested in hearing any of the other formats as a comparison.

Of course, none of the format mumbo-jumbo means aything if it ain't got "that thang" and At the Fillimore East has the juice. I love listening to Betts schwerve and slide betwixt Jamo and Butch...

Hay Auri, I think Swish-daddy is gonna progressively list all twenty-five, so's this is more of a discuss-as-it-comes thing than a list-ya-faves.

Sorry....Missed the point, eh?

It's all good. Besides, it's one of Swish's threads...it'll prolly be on life support soon enough.

I'll play

I too am surprised to see this one at #25 - I figured it'd be further down the road. I will be intersting to see what comes after this one. Given the '70s penchant for sweetened live albums, I wonder if that's taken into consideration. Never heard whether this one got the sweetening or not. Great live album and for the most part, the live album in most circles I ran in.

Too much soloing. Had the songs been shorter...

Saying a live Allman Brothers album has too much soloing is like saying cotton candy has too much sugar. Isn't that kinda the point?

Other than that, I don't have much here.

Zappa's uptempo live version of Whippin Post off of Them or Us is, for me, the definitive version.

I find myself listening less and less to this one. If I am in the mood it's great but otherwise it's just a little too indulgent. But that is the point I guess. Solid live album never the less and rightfully included here.

This would definitely crack my top 25.

Yeah, 25 is good...everyone knows that it certainly topped "Cher Live: The Farewell Tour" at #26, but never quite lived up to "The Bacon Brothers: Live" at #24. Where else would you put it? 25!!!

Indulgent? No more than Tchaikovsky was indulgent. If you want compact, pre-fab music selling fashion and attitude you won't find it here.


BTW, Swishy, props for digging out another list!

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Originally Posted by kexodusc

This would definitely crack my top 25.

Yeah, 25 is good...everyone knows that it certainly topped "Cher Live: The Farewell Tour" at #26, but never quite lived up to "The Bacon Brothers: Live" at #24. Where else would you put it? 25!!!

Indulgent? No more than Tchaikovsky was indulgent. If you want compact, pre-fab music selling fashion and attitude you won't find it here.


BTW, Swishy, props for digging out another list!

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...to keep this board from total ruination at the hands of nincompoops like bobsticks. :ciappa:

Swishdaddy

I can look back at The Allman Brothers and appreciate the high level of musical skills with which they performed, interpreted the Delta Blues, and wrote a few classics of their own. Add to that their young ages...it's pretty astounding. I can't think of many who compare today.

I would have placed this one higher than #25 as well. Not sure if it's top 10 material...but it's close. This album is the very definition of jam-rock, especially when paired with the live material on Eat a Peach.

top 10 for me

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Originally Posted by Troy

Saying a live Allman Brothers album has too much soloing is like saying cotton candy has too much sugar. Isn't that kinda the point?

Other than that, I don't have much here.

Zappa's uptempo live version of Whippin Post off of Them or Us is, for me, the definitive version.

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Agreed...

...and I like Yahozna and Truck Driver Divorce.

based on reputation alone I thought it would be higher. I have it and am impressed with it, but it doesn't make it to my machine very often. I guess it's because of hearing much of it on the radio in high school, etc. so maybe overplay/saturation and age have moved it farther down the list. I'm curious as to whether this is an all-genre list. If so, my guess is it's probably jazz top-heavy.

Good points deano. It'll be interesting to see this unfold. I suspect a lot of folks will be comparing subsequent titles against this.

This might be an interesting segue, 'Sticks....The "Fillmore" album was not only a great musical offering in its own right, but certainly was influential for many budding musicians. As far as up-and-comers go, how about Derek Trucks and the crew?

How about making this a "daily"?

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Originally Posted by jasn

How about making this a "daily"?

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Nah, I barely have time to pee these days, much less to come up with decent things to post about on RR (man is bobsticks going to skewer me for that line), so I want to keep it as a weekly post and, hopefully, draw some interest from the members. It looks like it worked pretty well, but I think there will be some harsh criticism for # 24. Really.

Swishdaddy

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Originally Posted by Swish

Nah, I barely have time to pee these days, much less to come up with decent things to post about on RR (man is bobsticks going to skewer me for that line)...
Swishdaddy

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Yesterday I was actually gonna take the time to come up with a Top-Ten List of "Reasons Why Swish Would Rather Pee Than Post Something Decent" but found myself doing any number of mundane things that were ultimately more rewarding.

Surely though, you macrame-ing your ass would have been high in the countdown.

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Originally Posted by bobsticks

Yesterday I was actually gonna take the time to come up with a Top-Ten List of "Reasons Why Swish Would Rather Pee Than Post Something Decent" but found myself doing any number of mundane things that were ultimately more rewarding.

Surely though, you macrame-ing your ass would have been high in the countdown.

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Then again, many of your treatises border on the inane or otherwise unintelligible. How about the 'Top Ten List of Things Swish Would Rather Do Than Post on RR". I'll get you started;

10. Macrame his a<a>ss into a chair while sipping a pale ale and puffing on a cigar
9. Play difficult songs like "Horse With No Name" on his acoustic guitar
8. Create compilations that no one will ever play (actually, that sounds like one of yours)
7. Pick lint from his navel
6. Work on the Sudoku from today's newspaper that was rated V. Easy

I think I've given you a reasonable head start, so have at it.

Swish - cooks with gas

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Originally Posted by Swish

Swish - posts with gas

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touchy, touchy

Yeah, I know, this is sooooo last week. But turn your head for a little while and look what happens: Swish throws down in front of God And Everybody with another Herculean effort to boost the RR post count up to the hot 'n' heavy days of Comp Fever 2000.

Maybe not.

Fillmore East. This list is already in trouble if this record is not in the top 5, maybe the top 3. There aren't 24 live records better than this. We could have a rational, open-minded discussion about this but you'd all be wrong.

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Originally Posted by Troy

Zappa's uptempo live version of Whippin Post off of Them or Us is, for me, the definitive version.

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Gimme a BEEEEEEE. Gimme an ESSSSSSS. What's that spell?

Zappa's version is not uptempo compared to any live version by the Allmans. The striking thing about Frank's version is how faithful it is to the original, especially compared to his other cover songs with all the goofing and shenanigans. Hell, that was the tour he was goofing on a lot of his own songs but treated the Allmans with respect. R-S-C-T-P-C-E, find out what it means to me!

BTW, I saw that Zappa show. Oh yes, touch my ticket stub, touch it...

NP: Kayak II

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Originally Posted by BradH

Yeah, I know, this is sooooo last week. But turn your head for a little while and look what happens: Swish throws down in front of God And Everybody with another Herculean effort to boost the RR post count up to the hot 'n' heavy days of Comp Fever 2000.

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All pent up and no place to go...take yer coat off and stay a while.

Yes, having the Allman's Filmore East album at the bottom of a top-25 live albums list does smell a tad fishy. Prolly a token placement at that. This means prolly no Waiting For Columbus, no Frampton Comes Alive...ah well. Wouldn't be half as fun if it weren't some controversy.

I took a look at this list, and, like the last one Swish chose, it's more interesting than a typical '10 greatest guitar players who are always in the top 10 on GREATEST GUITARIST LISTS' type of list, in that it's going to inspire plenty of mixed opinions. This list seems like the guy who put it together was trying to be more provocative, while the team of geniuses who wrote 'The Mostest 50 Albums Evah' were going for a similar goal without understanding where the goalposts were.

So, in the interests of being provocative, there are some ridiculous choices, to be sure, along with a couple that make perfect sense. The Allman Brothers makes sense, of course, and while I personally don't quarrel so much with the placement, I understand why many would feel it should be ranked higher. I don't disagree so much as I don't really care...but maybe I can come up with 24 live albums I like better, maybe easily, maybe not so easily. That's because I like the blues & always have & have never been a big fan of what the Allman Brothers did with the blues.

There were plenty of people in the 60s who did things with the blues that were interesting, visionary, inspirational, respectful, authentic, maybe not so authentic, whatever. But while there were secondary figures who played large roles (Mike Bloomfield, Ry Cooder), or larger figures whose work with the blues might be overshadowed by other things they did, or merely by being overshadowed by similar, more prominent figures (Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix), in the end, the most significant figures in pop music in the 60s whose work helped to create an interest in, and an audience for, the blues, and/or actually managed to inject change into a rather well-defined genre, would be the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, and, arguably, Bob Dylan.

Their legacies are pretty solid, of course, and easily identifiable. And all departed from the blues at some point, with varying results. For me, personally, the only legacy I don't care much for is Clapton's, but that's another matter. He had been around for years, and had done some things I have always liked, years before the Allmans came around.

And then they did. And I don't hate them, and I don't hate this album, not by any means. I won't even go so far as to refer to it as overblown in any sense. But I have a problem with it even though I do think that musically there is certainly merit there.

They added nearly two minutes to Statesboro Blues, modest by their standards on this rec. No problem there, really. More than two minutes to Done Somebody Wrong, an Elmore James tune that apparently hadn't needed to be any longer than 2 1/2 minutes. Stormy Monday is another short song, usually less than 3 minutes, but often less than 2 1/2, and they blew it up to nearly 9 minutes. Did this song really require this arrangement? You Don't Love Me mostly clocked in at 3 minutes or less. In their hands...more than 19 minutes. In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed, typically 7 minutes, now nearly double that length at 13. And the 5+ minute Whipping Post more than quadrupled in length to nearly 23 minutes.

Should length really be looked at as this much of an issue? Of course not--if it's good, it's good, and if it's not, it's not (and besides, the released versions are said to be patchworks anyway). And there are some great moments on this rec, so I'm not arguing that it's not 'good.' But you get to a point where turning a 3 minute song into a 20 minute showcase doesn't work for people like me. I don't have to cling to a posture of preferring 3 minute songs, or accurate/authentic representations of blues songs, either: you want to rearrange, lay out, improvise, knock yourself out. If you're going to do that, this is probably the best example of it, at least with this sort of material. Yet every time I hear it I scratch my head wondering why it was necessary. And the only conclusion I can draw, in spite of the obviously-darned-good playing and general approach, is that it's not.

There's something very compelling about communicating what you want to get across within one or two runs of 12 bars that makes a solo potentially important to the context of the song. Rather than making the song an excuse to have 144 bars of soloing, or whatever multiple of 12 you prefer. You can say a lot of things in 144 bars, or 72, or 36...it's finding a way to make that statement in 12 that gets me. But then I'm not a fan of overemphasizing the role of guitar in the blues, where piano, vocals, and harmonica are simply not on the same playing field, so far as popular perception...due of course to the aforementioned Clapton, et al. Of course, it's not against any law that they did these this way, but Elmore James, et al, wrote with a particular structure in mind, even if that structure is rigid. Maybe it's rigid for a reason. And maybe it works best in spite of how rigid it was.

The legacy of jam bands & Southern Rock, not to mention the trend of taking 2:30 blues tunes & converting them into 20-minute wankfests by people who couldn't carry the Allman Brothers' gear, for the past nearly-four-decades for anyone within earshot, is not my cup of tea. I try not to judge a record on having spawned all this sort of thing that I don't care for...or I'd have a lot more issues with a record like Live At Leeds (among others) than I do. Having looked at the whole list, I guess I would agree that it should've leapfrogged others that were compiled by another guy trying to strike some kind of ironic hipster pose...but while I'll grant the credit I think this rec & this band deserves, I'm just never going to be a fan of how they did what they did. And that's reinforced by what they wrought. So I listen to them rather infrequently. Even after all this time, I still enjoy the first couple of Led Zeppelin records more. And amongst live blues recs, this can't touch Etta James Rocks The House OR B.B. King Live At Cook County Jail (which I've always preferred to Live At The Regal, and where, with perhaps one exception, you cannot make the same point I made above with regards to exaggerated song lengths).

See, we can have a reasonable discussion about this, and I'm not wrong.

MGH, I find it ironic that you've used almost more words than there are lyrics to criticize a live jam album for being too long. :)

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Originally Posted by MindGoneHaywire

See, we can have a reasonable discussion about this, and I'm not wrong.

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I agree with you. There's nothing about a blues song that warrants a 15 minute jam interlude, even if its the Allmans. I have to be in the mood to listen to the Filmore East album, but I can certainly see why its revered the way it is. That being said, I can certainly see where this album isn't a lot of people's cup o'joe. I seen that there list as well, and in my mind, the fact that this Allman Bros album made it on the list seems suspicious, considering the other albums in total.

But still, I enjoy lists like this because its a chance to, once again, consider music I may have otherwise never heard of, and that's why I came here in the first place. If I could guess every album on it, It'd be boring.

Is the entire list posted elsewhere?

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Originally Posted by jasn

Is the entire list posted elsewhere?

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DON'T LOOK!

It takes the fun out of the game.

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Originally Posted by ForeverAutumn

DON'T LOOK!

It takes the fun out of the game.

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Yeah, you're right.

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Originally Posted by MindGoneHaywire

Yet every time I hear it I scratch my head wondering why it was necessary. And the only conclusion I can draw, in spite of the obviously-darned-good playing and general approach, is that it's not.

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There's no doubt that fitting an interesting, short solo into a well composed song is compelling. I agree totally, there's just something about it. But it's not the only legitimate way to make music. Jamming didn't start with the Yardbirds, it had been going on for years back in the swing era when soloists would take turns all night until the dancers were finally worn out in the wee hours. Then there was bebop. So there was plenty of precedent for this sort of thing in the 60's when rock bands were looking for ways to break the artistic constraints imposed by the music biz; it had just never been applied to the blues before until the Yardbirds did it. It was revolutionary, that's why it was necessary. Of course, there was much that was not necessary, Sturgeon's Law applies here as always. But I see a huge difference between a Duane Allman solo and any number of "lesser thans". It's all about focus. How long can you focus on the music before you're just moving your fingers. How much music do you actually have inside? Guys like Allman, Beck or Zappa seemingly never ran out of ideas when they jammed while other guys would fake it almost from the start. There's a difference between wanking and music-making.

Was any of this necessary for the blues? Does it matter? I don't buy the idea that Clapton somehow hurt the blues by being a non-traditionalist. The blues players were never as traditional as modern music lovers' fantasies would have it. It was very protean and took elements from country, folk, Tin Pan Alley, Hollywood, all kinds of things. Whatever it took to keep the audience interested, whatever it took to survive. These guys (and gals) were performing for people, not Alan Lomax. It was distinctly perceived by black audiences as show biz and performance, not folk music. I would agree that Clapton perpetuated the myth that the blues was always about some lone travelling guitarist who sold his soul blah blah blah. But young white blues lovers had already created that myth when they canonized Robert Johnson who, in reality, was practically unknown in his own time. Besides, rock 'n' roll was nothing if not blasphemous and non-traditional. That sense of experimention and pushing the boundaries and mixing genres was the driving creative force in rock music until the mid-70's. To say that the perfect song is the pinnacle of music is to say that nothing was "necessary" after Gershwin or Cole Porter or Weill or choose-your-weapon. There's more to music than the perfect song. Your description of the track lengths on Fillmore compared to the studio versions reminds me of that scene in Dead Poet's Society with the book describing how poetry could be measured on a graph. No one should be thinking about the clock when they're listening to music anyway. In fact, I would argue that jamming has a more human element to it than traditional songs because it more accurately reflects everyday life. Sure, you have to be at a certain time at a certain place on certain days and do certain things. But you don't really know what's going to happen so, in reality, you're making it up as you go along within a framework. (This wouldn't include free jazz.) In other words, I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with jamming. Obviously, this jibed well with the chemical inducements of the "youth movement" but it's not like all great songwriters were puritans either.

Anyway, as for Fillmore East, it was damn well recorded for its time and, to me, that's always a huge factor. After all, we're talking about live albums, not just performances. Are there 24 live albums that are better? Nah, not in the rock genre. But this is the problem we had with the other list because there are great live classical albums, live jazz albums, etc.; all kinds that won't be included.

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Originally Posted by BradH

Anyway, as for Fillmore East, it was damn well recorded for its time and, to me, that's always a huge factor. After all, we're talking about live albums, not just performances.

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Considering the writer followed this album with Tim Hardin and an album that was recorded in a bingo hall, it makes you wonder what the criteria is.

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Originally Posted by 3-LockBox

Considering the writer followed this album with Tim Hardin and an album that was recorded in a bingo hall, it makes you wonder what the criteria is.

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....rock music, in all its glory, has largely failed to produce very many great live recordings, and that many of the greatest live performances were captured by bootleggers. He has some very interesting choices on his list, to say the least, and I hope that once I've posted the entire 25, everyone will post their favorite 25. In all honesty, I couldn't come up with 25. No way, no how, but rock historians like J sure can.

Let's just try to have fun with it. It appears to be drawing some interest, which is exactly as I intended, even though most of us, including yours truly, will disagree with many of his choices, or, at least, his ranking of them.

Swishalishous

1/2 here know the list and want to trickle it out, the other half left in the dark and scratching their heads. Too hip for me...

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Originally Posted by jasn

1/2 here know the list and want to trickle it out, the other half left in the dark and scratching their heads. Too hip for me...

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I guess I can see why you'd feel that way. It ain't tough to find the list if you're really feeling un-hip. I'll let you figure it out - it took me all of 5 minutes to find it. But no, I do not intend to 'trickle it out'. We've only discussed the last two weeks thus far. We've done this sort of series before and it makes for good, weekly discussion. But, scratch if you like.

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Originally Posted by Swish

....rock music, in all its glory, has largely failed to produce very many great live recordings

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agreed

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Originally Posted by swisheroo

Let's just try to have fun with it. It appears to be drawing some interest, which is exactly as I intended, even though most of us, including yours truly, will disagree with many of his choices, or, at least, his ranking of them.

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dispair, wailing and nashing of teeth...for 23 more weeks....cool.

I'm so there.