Stylus Magazine’s Top 50 Live Albums of All Time

Boy, with J. Geils, Bruce Springsteen, and Erykah Badu on this list, I'm really getting excited to see the remaining 40 albums. Would I be off the mark in guessing that Billy Ray Cyrus and perhaps Jodeci will fill out the latter slots? Or maybe you folks can work in some Bell Biv Devoe and John Cougar.....

Or you could see the glass as half full and say, "Wow, if David Bowie's Live and the Velvet Underground 1969 are only in the bottom ten of this list, how good is the rest going to be? Or not.

Well, ähem, am I allowed to make you some offers for the remaining albums??! - The Name Of this Band is Talking Heads - 801 Live - Allman Brothers Band Live at Fillmore - Soft Machine: Third It´s only meant to be some food for thought, before we have to face "Rattle and Hum" or Peter Frampton Live :) :)

I can't listen to any Sinatra album that wasn't live, so I'm hoping he gets some space.

The nice thing with musical listmania is you walk through your own memories, and strange combinations/snippets of memory/sound turn up and vansish. What do ya think of these 5-star-live-albums: Henry Cow: Concerts (wonderful re-release); Sam Cooke: Live at the Harlem Square Club; Supersilent 5 (one of the greastest live acts on the planet); Neil Young: Live Rust; Miles Davis: "Big Fun" or "In Concert" (underrated masterpieces by Miles Davis from his electric period.)

I'm just really hoping that no live albums by The Doors make the list, because those things are just horrible.

Does Supersilent 5 count? It was fairly restructured. It was recorded live, yes, but it isn't really a live document. Let's be safe and stick with Supersilent 7. As for my votes, votes that probably won't get on there, Swans are Dead and The Necks Athenaeum Homebush Quay & Raab.

RE: Miles' "Big Fun." Not a live album. That said, if we're including jazz, one might opt for Cannonball Adderley's "Mercy Mercy Mercy" (sort of live), or Art Blakey at Birdland (one, two, or both), or Miles at the Plugged Nickel (all 7 discs), or Miles at the Cellar Door (all 6 discs), or Coltrane at Birdland, or Coltrane at the Village Vanguard, or Brad Mehldau in Tokyo, or... etc

Point for you, angrymice. And yes, Supersilent 7 is black and white and beautiful in real time! Hope this series will not end up as nostalgic show-down for people who never left "Hotel California". Some of this old, so-called timeless stuff (some!) doesn´t stand the test of time! The trick is you have to listen to it again, and not trust your memory! I did that with that famous Allmwn Brothers-Fillmore-double-album. Blues-rock is definitely not my passion, but that music transcends all genre definitions. Listening to "In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed", will (let´s get pathetic!) fill my heart with joy forever. Or Robert Wyatt´s "Moon In June" from "Third".

Swans are Dead, absolutely! I hope to see Hawkwind's "Space Ritual" on this list.

"Nighthawks at the Diner" for me

From my collection, the top 5live albums that would (in a perfect world) absolutely make the Stylus list:

The Smiths - Rank
Depeche Mode - 101
The Cure - Paris
Spiritualized - Royal Albert Hall October 10 1997
Wilco - Kicking Television

This baby needs some Shihad in the hizzy. Best criminally ignored band ever!

James Brown _live at the apollo_, obviously.

Good job putting in the Grateful Dead. Most rags tend to rag on the dead, but it is safe to call them one of the greatest live acts. Of course, I hope to see maybe two more live dead albums on the list and expect to be disappointed. But I would be really impressed if Stylus included one or two more anyways. My favorite recently would be Dick's Picks #2 because of the amazing jam from about 13:00-18:00 of the "Dark Star." Other than that, it's a short, tight disc. Very upbeat with a lot of energy.

anyone know if those Dylan Bootleg Series discs would count. i'd assume that the "Royal Albert Hall" show would make the list if they count it.

shihad are rubbish. i'm from wellington too. the best live albums i have heard: donny hathaway "live" folsom prison kick out the jams sam cooke at harlem square name of this band is talking heads

I have to thank bonhoffer23 for jogging my memory...the Bill Evans Trio's "Sunday at the Village Vanguard" or "Waltz for Debby." And the Quintet's "Jazz at Massey Hall" seems to be perennial favorite, if not necessarily for me.

Would you care to elaborate a little?!?

Ditto that. It's a tad dense, Disexists.

Anybody got a clue what Disexists is on about?

"Professor" Irwin Corey did that particular schtick so much better.

RE: bonhoffer, yes, "Big Fun" was a studio recording. But it had a certain "live energy", at least:) Funnily enough, I just found a very good article on Stylus that kind of re-evaluated "Big Fun" that was put down by many opponents of his "electric phase". Anybody particularly interested in Miles´ 1969-1975-years, should go for Philip Freedman´s book "Running The Voodoo Down". And coming back to possibly great live recordings - Neil Young will be putting out a "Fillmore Recording" from 1971 within nthe next few weeks, with guitarist Danny Whitten still alive. Sixteen Minutes of "Cowgirl In The Sand" - well, I´m curiously looking forward to those pasttimes!

Shihad are NOT rubbish! You have no taste in music if you think that. They're way better than the Average - I mean, Arctic Monkeys.

Hey you three, don't encourage the Disextist. Tell him he's a patchouli tranced hippy who'd love to see a five hour dead jam at the numbe rone spot. Then see what he really thinks. MxBx

I'm with The-Disexists on this one, even though I can't really grasp his point. All I know is he's smarter than most of you half wits, so lay off of the man. Florenz is cool though coz he has a good point about that new Neil Young show.

Just wanted to add that meatbreak needs some meat up his ass for being a dumbshit. cmere hon.

Shihad churn out stadium anthems for westies and freshman. And the Artic Monkeys are less than average, dork. Why is there no love for Les Rallizes Denudes?

I'm genuinely curious - do people really prefer the Name of This Band Is Talking Heads over Stop Making Sense (special editions of both, obviously)? I'm a huge fan of the band and the latter has always seemed clearly superior to me, but I've noticed a couple of people mentioning the former (which to my taste is too long and not possessed of the same weirdly joyous nervousness that makes SMS so amazing).

The crack of your knuckles is music to by ears Babs. I just can't do eyebrows that meet in the middle, sorry. Of course Disexist nails it (like his coffin) - once he's done with his abstractifificating and metaphornication - but a list of live albums is far more inclusive and universally debatable than a top 50 best ever gigs, of which there is minimal scope for the interactive exchanges thusly flourishing. What did you think I meant?

Point well taken, Disexists. (I still think the original was a little too much.) Barbarian: I take umbrage at being called a halfwit by someone who's A-material consists of sodomy jokes.

Dear me, your overwrought wordiness just sounds silly. My favourite live jazz album is Coltrane's Live in Antibes. It may well be learned rather than learn-ed but I can assure it is loved. I also hope that Tim Buckley’s Dream Letter: Live in London gets a mention because that is fucking great.

RE: Ian Mathers. I´m a huge band of the Talking heads, too. My all-time faves are three Eno-collabs "More Songs about Buildings and Food", "Fear Of Music" and "Remain in Light". i saw Jonathan Demme´s "Stop Making Sense" long time ago (still in my mind the beginning: David Byrne appearing alone on stage, looking around, setting the tone:)) - and liked that very much. But I was always coming back to the three studio albums. A friend gave me a copy of TNOTBITH a year ago, so it was just a wonderful time journey and refreshing of memories. But I think, yes, "SMS" was a more focussed work. P.S. But something goes deadly wrong in the case that Soft Machine´s "Third" and one of Miles´"electric albums (69-75) won´t appear in the final showdown. For many good reasons. ´(And "jazz" was only part of that magic!)

Too much in the way of Teo madness on Big Fun for me to feel like it has much in the way of Live Energy, but I'd happily see Aghartha make a list of amazing live albums. Or It's About That Time. (Take both and you've got a fairly effective set of bookends for 1970s Electric Miles). That said, I guess I've always had a problem with jazz records showing up on top 50/100/500 albums lists, mostly because said lists are almost always 98% devoted to rock records (or to pop/rock and its various sidechannels) and the inclusion, then, of the publically recognized Hallmarks of jazz (Kind of Blue, Love Supreme, Bitches Brew) feels like pandering. Maybe that's what is meant by the potential for jazz to elucidate a list, but I'm not sure. What's gonna make the top 20? I'm predicting Live at the Apollo, Live at Leeds, Live at the "Royal Albert Hall," all of which should be there. Top 10 bootleg live recordings next?

So far it's too much languishing ingraciously in emphatic LIVE album despondency, not enough Peter Frampton.

Jazz is one of the few genres of music that ALWAYS sounds better live than in the studio, so it should always rank higher than live rock albums. "How The West Was Won" should get some space, though. Just putting that out there.

Just to clarify since I've seen it mentioned here more than once, Soft Machine's Third was ineligible for the list as three of its four tracks were recorded in the studio. (The great live track, "Facelift" was actually a splice of two seperate recordings, BTW.)

Ian: I think I prefer TNOTBITH to SMS. I dunno, but I think the first disc of TNOTB is just amazing with all the early songs. Plus disc 2 has some great, in some cases (in my opinion) better versions of many of the songs on SMS

"That much live Talking Heads"? We're talking two albums here; that doesn't really strike me as excessive.

Rust Never Sleeps of course...Too late to stop now, Hooray! Oil on Canvas, WTF? I gave that one back to the Salvation Army.

miles davis, LiveEvil

Band of Gypsies will be pretty high up I guess, as will How The West Was Won. Rory Gallacher's Irish Tour? I thought Minimum-Maximum (Kraftwerk) was fantastic too. I have a bootleg Massive Attack live album that really should be on the list too...

daring pick on Sex Machine, but it's still no Live at the Apollo, vol. 1 or 2. I think I'd actually put the bill withers carnegie hall record #1 on my own list. it is that good.

Live albums have their place. I'd rather listen to James Brown live than hear some of his studio work. But nowadays, most bands put out live albums as a cheap cash-in, so hearing good live albums that were made in the past 5 years is rare.

The Di-Sexists: When I was in graduate school, I overheard a professor telling a student that any piece of writing can be made better if the author goes back and takes out two-thirds of the adjectives and adverbs. I think of that every time I see one of your comments.

Have we finally arrived at self-parody?

Additionally, I'd like to second johnedowney's last comment.

JessGraves: What the hell are you talking about? Oftentimes, a live album can show you a side to the music of an artist that you never even knew existed. I don't think it's rockist at all to like/ listen to live albums. It simply shows a listener another dimension of music that isn't simply made behind the walls of a studio. Take, for example, the live version of "Psycho Killer" from Stop Making Sense. It's stripped down all the way to a single acoustic guitar and a beat that Byrne got from a "boombox" (which was in reality someone behind the curtain making an electronic beat. It's so different from the studio version that it shows the song in a different light. That's the beauty of live albums: the improvisational element and the ability to tweak with the songs to give the listener another feel for them. So how the hell can you say that the most interesting work is being done in the studio? That's just attacking the live album for the sake of attacking it, because that is most definatly not the case. Have you ever listened to live music? At all? Like, I'm not just talking some bigname concert. Anytime a band plays live it will be a different experience than in the studio, be it the J Geils Band or that fucking high school hardcore band your freinds were in called "Spazztastic Peace on George Bush's Head" (work with me here). Live music has its place in just about ever genre from jazz to R&B to rock.

i wanna punch you people in the face

RE: cwperry: good professor RE. bassman08: fine mini-essay! Within the last ten days I saw great live performances in Germany from M. Ward (solo, with guitar and some effects), Sparklehorse and Lambchop that all added something valuable to my home-listenting of their studio albums. RE: jazz albums. It is nonsense that live jazz albums are "per se" better than studio recordings. SHOWDOWN: the final countdown for my personal Top ten live albums for the desert island: 10)The Kinks : Live at Kelvin Hall 9) Supersilent 7 8)John Coltrane: Live at the Village Vanguard Again 7)The Allman Brothers Band Live At The Fillmore East 6) Sam Cooke: Live At The Harlem Square Club (thanks, Josh!) 5)Keith Jarrett: Fort Yawuh (with the American Quartet; a live-recording from the Village Vanguard) 4)Henry Cow: Concerts (some tears in my eyes cause Soft Machine´s "Third" was really only live in parts, memory plays tricks, thank you, Mallory) 3)Miles Davis: In Concert (or Dark Magus) 2) Phil Manzanera / Brian Eno et al: 801 Live (John Peel loved it, it´s now 30 years old and still so fresh!) 1) John Coltrane: Live in Japan (the late Coltrane Quartet, live mono recordings, and so utterly beautiful. P.S. I forgot one of the great live albums from Don Cherry and Neil Young, well, you can´t have it all!P.P.S. "My" three greatest albums from 2006 were defintely no live recordings: A) Scott Walker: The Drift B) Joanna Newsom: Ys C) Leafcutter John: The Forest and The Sea.

The-Disexists: Does my comment suffer a heresy, or does it commit a heresy? I hate reading bad writing. Proffokker is right, you are now a parody of yourself. Now, enjoy dreaming up a feverish response that I will never read.

To respond at odds with the prevailing trend that live performances can enhance studio recordings - I had loved Yo La Tengo's 'And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out' for years and listened to it almost every day I was that obsessed with it. Then in 2004 I saw them live and they were atrocious. The problem was that my expectations were quite high - not an unforgivible conceit, right?. I have never really been able to listen to that album in the same way ever again and actually stopped listening to it completey for about a year, and even though their new one is pretty good, my admiration for them is significantly diminished. So it's not always good to go see people live, because they don't always deliver.
My top live album though? Probably Joy Division - Preston 28 February 1980.

True, but some bands are even better live. I saw the Roots live a year and a half or so back, and it made me want to go out and buy "The Tipping Point," if only to help me reminisce. As with most things, it depends on the band/artist. But the right band/artist can doing some really interesting things outside the studio. Epiphany: okay, this is fairly obvious, but I think it's wierd that we're debating the utility of live music, since live music had been the only way one could really enjoy music right up until the end of the 19th century.

meatbreak-
I strongly recommend that you seek out and read the liner notes in Yo La Tengo's Painful.

Why? Do I get a name-check? Will do though, thanks. Sounds intriguing. Also Proffokker - fine point about the advent of recorded music and Graves, lady - you really need to get out more if you think the studio is where it's all happening. Pro-tools trickery is one thing, but the other 90% of it is the band doing their thing and if they can't do it on stage, they can't do it in the studio, simple - and it shows.

Here's a question: how does the importance of the concert affect its perceived quality (if at all)? I've seen the "last" concert of the Murder City Devils on DVD, and while the music was awesome, the crowd and the band seemed more into it, knowing that it was going to be their last hurrah (well, for a while, at least).

This list is really random. Radiohead's contractual obligation album over Live Rust, Live at the Harlem Square Club and Curtis Live? I don't think so.

lets hope the top ten are ALL phish or at least #1 is livephish vol. 1, if not then die

RE: fleezer. Look, I have a good idea. Contact Barbarian (he wants to punch everybody on the face) and di-sexists (he might bring some flying tea-pots to the party) and then start a karaoke-trio exclusively singing phish, paris hilton and the strokes. Might be fun!

Jazz is usually better live, rock'n'roll is usually better in the studio, hip-hop/rap concerts usually suck (with a few, very noteworthy exceptions), and jam bands suck, PERIOD. Can we all agree to that?

Hey Jess, you make a bit of a jump there from my attacking my suggestion that you should see more live stuff to saying Radiohead are shit - something I have to defiantly refute - but I never even mentioned them. I mean, you say you'd rather DIE than see them live, but then say they're shit live, so you must have seen them, right? And the TV doesn't count.

Anyway, of course that would be my position), isn't it everyone's? Why is o.k. for a band to edit up their incompetence in the studio to produce something listenable rather than being a band that can actually play together onstage and create something just as layered and intricate and involving? (just three adjectives mind, feel free to add your own attributes) What are you saying Jess, that you see loads of bands all the time and they continually prove your theory that playing together is not how they work best and they'd be better off layering tracks one by one behing a glass screen? I'm not being argumentative or provocative, I'm intrigued.

Come on, you think rock vocalists are flat then you walk out of Radiohead after 20 minutes...something's not adding up here. So for you, who is actually any good on stage?

O.K. So you're into your industrial psych-outs. That might explain away the Radiohead thing, and your disdain for rock and roll bawlers. Thing is, as johnedowney kind of said a bit earlier up, rock and roll might 'sound' better in the studio, but it's all about the energy and relationship with an audience. Plenty different kinds of energy, I admit, but that wide-eyed, feral , frenzied one? You only get that from rock and roll (in most of it's myriad forms). But Psychic Ills? Weren't you baiting us Boredoms lovers a little while back? When I saw them a couple of years back doing their three drummers gigs it was something pretty special indeed - no guitars to mis-play either. That ones in my top 5 for sure.

Like Aiden Moffat?

Can't imagine how bad his singing voice would be. Hawkwind? I was going to ask whether a Motorhead album would be in the top few - At Hammersmith maybe? There must be some rivetheads at Stylus somewhere

this starts to become really funny - be careful, meatbreak, in the end you will have a date with that jessegirl(?), sitting in your local cinema watching shortbus hand in hand...

But that Clap Hands guy's voice is so reedy and weedy. I thought you said Lemmy was your hero! You've ruined it ALL now!! I'm going home. (Literally - I should have left work 10 minutes ago)

It's a date.

(and here the curtain´s closing)- Meatbreak, I knew it. You owe me a dime:) Best wishes from the Radiohead-Talking Heads-Connection!

That live Radiohead album is good, and sure enough the version of Like Spinning Plates is spectacular, but to place it as the 13th best live album of all time is crazy. We all know how great Radiohead are, how they're probably the single most critically loved band of the last 10 years, blah blah blah, but putting I Might Be Wrong at 13 seems like a concession to Radiohead because THEY are so great, rather than because THE ALBUM actually deserves it.

YES! Stop Making Sense! C'mon, Name Of This Band! CBF arguing about Shihad. The main reason I rabbit on about the 'Had is because I want them to be more popular overseas. It really annoys me how many sub-par bands are being rewarded when Shihad could kick their asses ten times over, Westie anthems or not. If someone buys 'The General Electric' because of my ranting, then I'll be one very happy mofo. Rant over, kthxbai.

Disappointed to see the Jay-Z live album on this list. Not because it's a particularly poor album, but rather because your intro to this piece seemed to suggest that you would be dealing in live albums that 'elevated' the art form. To be frank, the Jay-Z live album - despite some nice playing by The Roots - never improves or expands upon Hova's originals. Would it be wrong of me to suggest that this album's inclusion smacks of tokenism? After all, how many truly great 'live' albums exist in the hip hop canon...

I assume one of these Miles Davis albums will make the cut: Dark Magus Pangaea Agharta A few others that haven't made the cut yet: Roxy Music - Heart Still Beating Bob Marley & The Wailers - Live Santana - Lotus The Quintet - V.S.O.P. Jerry Lee Lewis - Live at The Star Club Hamburg Jerry Lee Lewis - The Complete Palomino Club Recordings And despite the endless Doors disdain The Doors - In Concert (Absolutely Live, Alive She Cried, and Live at The Hollywood Bowl My favorite live album is The Mekons 25th Anniversary Concert at The Abbey Pub, but is not available to the general public.

I know Zappa's Live at The Roxy will be in the top 10 or Little Feat's, Waiting for Colombus

I Might Be Wrong doesn't even belong in the motherfucking top fifty. Dumb motherfuckers. Good job rewriting history, morons.

Oh and the dumbass ripping on Yo La Tengo's live show has obviously never heard a frickin roaring extended version of "Barnaby, Hardly Working." Bad, newbie! bad!

Barnaby, Hardly Working is an ass-kicking, mind-altering song...live or on record. Since you guys were talking about vocalists ruining a live show, the one time I actually had to leave the club was because of the singer for The Rapture. His bleating was so obnoxious, it ruined the rest of the band. It wasn't ironic non-singing...merely excruciating. Pro Tools sure helped that guy in the studio.

Jess: Yes. Really. I have my...(wait for it)...own opinions. The fact that you seem to hate most live acts makes me think that very little could have been done to please you. And Scott Storch has been kind of a hack lately, so I can't say how brilliant he's been.

Oh, and anyone who isn't inspired by the spoken intro at the beginning of Kick Out the Jams (song or album) is either extremely conservative or dead.

Nothing to add (yet), I just wanted the 100th comment.

Oh hang on, the top 10 just appeared. What?! No frickin' Motorhead. The Who Live At Leeds broke my cd player by the disc turning up vertically, that's how rockin' that album is - I mean, how can the even happen?!

Tabla Beat Science - Live In San Francisco At Stern Grove is my "hey wait" pick.

no phish?! whatever, youve just discredited yourself forever. no one put on a show like they did, did f'in bowie or dickhead dylan write songs within songs on the spot? 97% of the albums listed is shit that barely differs on the studio record, making the live show nothing but novelty. f off stylus and anyone who disagrees. your not aware even aware of it but live PHISH owns your life, you may think not but be rest assured they do! if you realize I congratulate you, your life will only get better now... start with 11/14/95 set II.

RE: Fleezer, plese read my advice once again (yesterday 10:16:20)- what are you bullshitting around? Are you 12 years old? What you´re saying about 90x per cent of these albums, is simply ridiculous. I mean , look, one my all time fave live recordings didn´t appear on the list, too - "801 live" - but it´s okay - something´s always falling under the table. Even on my private Top 10 list, I forgot somehow to bring some of the great late Tim Buckley London perfomances into play, so what? RE: meatbreak. You got the date? I was a bit worrying, cause she wanted to bring the Disexists with her. I will see Yo la Tengo in Düsseldorf, I hope very much I won´t be disappointed. Know of people who enjoy them live very much - maybe, they had a bad day! And next week ist Sujan Stevens-Night in Cologne, ten people in the band - and aside from his fantastic "Avalanche"-cd he´s now putting out a 5-cd-box with christmas songs. This might be a bit too much for me, but I will give it a try! Have a great weekend!

Yeah, YLT possibly did have a bad day so i hope they're good for you Florenz, especially the brazen VUisms of their new stuff. I can't wait to hear what Disexists has to say about Dylan's No.1 position, I've missed his presence in the latter half of these comments. Oh, and Nirvana; surely remembering their MTV Unplugged is like bottling the jizz left over after your sister got raped and getting it out every Christmas to put on top of the tree.

jessgraves: you're just rude. think about it; being rude is pretty bad.

Live at Leeds kicks so much ass it should be illegal.

Jessy is only playing rude. In her secret life, she ´s listening to old Cohen songs, the old vinyl of "Desire" is full of clicks and cuts (because she has listened to it a thousand times). Sometimes you can hear her sing "One more Cup of Coffee" in the wee hours of the morning. And she surely loves Christmas songs.

Told you so.

Now here's the thing. I have always considered live albums to be more memorabilia, nothing like cultural maypoles to dance around. If you were there, a nice souvenier to bring back the smells and feel and if you weren't, just a little something to show you what you missed. Sure, we can blast them into space as historic documents, touchstones of when the world, no - music world, no - small section of the music world, turned its head at the same time, but surely all any alien is going to think is 'Yeah, that sounds pretty interesting, shame I didn't see it.' I never really think 'Oh yeah, today I'll listen to XX's live album'. Peel Sessions, on the other hand, are a whole other Top 50.

stop making sense is my favorite album, period. tnotb is nice and all but nowhere near as compelling as an album (to my ears obv.) and that blurb doesn't help me understand why it'd be priveleged. (except that folks like their early material more.) anyway. weird to see a bunch of only recently available records/live comps even (clash, zep, dylan 75) are so high up. but i do love that kraftwerk album.

This whole public talk started with a guy bearing the name of a killer in a famous Russian novel. We read of people´s death wishes, hell phantasies and a bit about their attitude to live performances. Ex-scientologists are looking around the corner (who are regarded as hippies,oh me,oh my)). So, if some of these people would meet in real life - how many pills, psychologists, and police forces would be necessary to prevent Fight Club II ?! Let´s come back to the great moments in time captured on a lot of these records or in our memories. A week ago I was in Cologne, Gebäude 9 - a nice place. M. Ward was performing solo and giving his version of Bowie´s "Let´s Dance". I really don´t like the original, but he turned shit (mainstream) into gold. So beautiful!

Anyone who's seen Sunno))) will know that it really is not possible to capture the most compelling performances on tape.

Actually, my number one live album of all time is Atari Teenage Riot live at Brixton Academy 1999. That's how you fucking reinterpret your material for the live arena, epsecially when you're opening for Nine Inch nails and the shrinks told you to NEVER PLAY AGAIN!!!

With the possible exception of The Who, that top 10 looks pretty sweet to me. I would've placed Nirvana ahead of Talking Heads, but you really can't go wrong with either. Oh, and, uh, justify causation with the periscope of your soul, or else you will never truly comprehend the meaning of the word "discretion"...and with that lack of solitude will come a million seagulls to cave your skulls in with their shotguns of logic and nuclear shit bombs. They will sing beautiful songs that you will never understand because your intellect is inferior to the dolphin's. Perhaps, then, after the world has ended, and we are all dead, and we can look back at the mistakes we made in this mortal coil, we will know why "Scabdates", "Life On The Murder Scene", and "Live at the Starland Ballroom" deserve to be in this top ten. Obfuscate the obfuscated. Vamoose.

any list of "top live albums" that doesn't include "live at the regal" isn't much of a list at all. i understand, though, you had to make room for that portishead album.

Ah, nerts, no Shihad. On the other hand.... Y-Y-Y-YUSSSSS for NOTB! OK, I'm happy.

i'm flabbergasted that you would leave iron maiden's "live after death" off of this list. regardless of what you think of this band, you've got to love this live double lp. you're all a bunch of hipster bitches.

...who don't really care about iron maiden.

i know its kinda off-topic, but I saw yo la tengo live and they were terrible then too. Instead of playing the beautiful guitar solo for "stockholm syndrome," ira just did some wanky noise for 30 seconds. But I still love them anyway

whatever, fokker...i'm sure you're stoked on the live jay-z, huh?

No, I'm not. I was more intrigued by its inclusion than anything, but thanks for playing.

yo, i just wanted to stop by one last time to say this list sucks. see ya.

where is mariah's unplugged? she killed songs like "if it's over" and had a #1 hit with "i'll be there." aretha live at fillmore is great, too.

Disexists, i´m more interested in experiences than messages. Talking about experiences is interesting as well, but your pseudo-surreal arrogant "telling-the-truth"-point of view is unbearable. Offending people who have something to say about their love for certain musics, is so stupid. This week´s side column made a lot of people curious to look (again) for some (new) old records, refreshing their memories, leading to some valuable personal experiences, where none of these post-scientological-pseudo-esoteric mumblings are of any value.

Kraftwerk?? Portishead?? and not one John Coltrane, Neil Young, Zappa...but you have 2 Talking Heads albums.

Lemmy totally deserves a place on this list. From the very unfortunate derision directed toward Maiden earlier (how can you diss a record that starts with a speech by effin' Winston Chruchill?!), it doesn't seem likely that this crew would dig on the heavier stuff but how can you ignore "No Sleep 'Til Hammersmith"? For all the accolades you heap on the Talking Heads, does any one of their (comparatively flaccid) shows include a number introduced by the road crew? I'm sure that large suits transcend something or another, but does David Byrne's group illustrate the might, if not the necessity, of the double-kick drum like Motorhead does throughout "No Sleep"? And finally, could Tina Weymouth ever be mistaken for someone with the nickname "Philthy Animal"?

Wow, this is one of the shittiest lists I've seen in a long long time. Half of these albums are unlistenable and where is Cheap Trick?

Live/Evil is an awful pick. The live stuff doesn't represent what the group was like as John McLaughlin was brought in for one night only as a ringer. The so-called "transition" period can be heard on the Cellar Door boxed set. For pure balls to the walls Miles Agartha is the place to go. So easy to forget that the acoustic set Dylan does before the mythic electric is BORING as hell.

* tryptamines

(both of you were wrong . . . idiots)

"Here's why this disc matters: because nothing you play after it does." That is freaking deep, man. LOL.

MonsterKids: I wasn't actually expresssing any sort of dislike of Iron Maiden. I'm officially neutral. I just thought it was unreasonable of ashetler to complain that they weren't included when he/she him/herself basically implied (rightly, it seems) none of the pollsters even liked Iron Maiden. Obviously, the list won't be crammed with consensus (or majority) un-favorites. Seriously, though, opening with Churchill does sound pretty badass.

"Forget the history. Here's why this disc matters: because nothing you play after it does." Yeah...that's not hyperbole.

Apparently written sarcasm is difficult for me without italics. That last one was sarcastic, if anyone's curious.

Role-playing facists is a bit ambivalent in a public field, disexists. Fuck yourself, sweety! Such a nasty arrogant attitude always produces boomerangs.

Agreed, Disexists. Completely agreed. We will now count our tallyhoes in the pit of eternal happiness, while the tunes of Unicorns and El-P warble in the background. If that is not lovemaking, then I don't know what is.

You would have never thought that such a document would become a "historic" one in such a short amount of time - but that happened with "That Striped Sunlight Sound" from The Go-Betweens - after the tragic death of Grant McLennan. it´s a wonderful live performance in their hometown, full of soulful songs and talks. Highly appreciated! (DVD plus audio-cd)

That was, in fact, my @#!#@$ point.

I always knew, reading through the list, that there was something major I was forgetting. I found it at #5. "MTV Unplugged in New York" is one of my favorite albums and I was glad to see it ranked so highly, even though I, too, would have put it above Talking Heads. Overall, this was as good a job as anyone could have done with a gargantuan task like this, so nice work.

No, not that great a job - seriously, ATR, Brixton 1999. Has anyone here actually heard it? (or maybe you were even there). An unbelievable job of sonically attacking an audience. Way more meaningful than some band chopping out their tracks in the most perfect way possible. Mayhem, total ayhem and definately an event that will not likely be repeated, since few bands have the capacity to turn their set into somethng so totally ferocious and different to what their audience expects. Kind of like Dylan's Albert hall gig I giess, without the crappy acoustic bit at the beginning. You can all stick with your safe acoustic sets and sleep well at night though.

No Hawkwind No Credibility