We experience music typically either at a show or on record. The live album is the device by which artists and labels attempt to bridge the two. The types of live album vary. There are shows set up to be recorded, there are highlights from tours, there are tracks covering a period of time and many points in between. Then we have the archive releases of shows or highlights and live shows added to studio archive releases as well as artists delving into their vaults to release shows and there are box sets – entire tours committed to CD or vinyl, or histories extensively mined.
Lately we have seen tour recordings being released on streaming services for fans to enjoy without the expense of producing a live record. At the end of last year Georgia-born singer-songwriter Megan Moroney shared a recording of songs played on her Am I Okay Tour within days of the last show. Brimming with the moment it’s an exciting listen. And that’s the official releases.
We also get the radio vaults washed through business failures so that ownership is sufficiently vague for a label to introduce the world to this buried treasure. And we have the delights of archve.org where fans – with the acquiescence of artists – share their recordings for free with anyone who cares to download them. Finally, there are bootlegs – or recordings of indeterminate origin as one much missed source labelled them. Fans are known to prize some bootleg recordings over the artist’s official releases. For many years the Little Feat release Electrif Lycanthrope was considered the peak of a much-loved band. And there are many – this writer included – who regard Springsteen’s show at Winterland in San Francisco in December 1978 as the essence of his writing and performance.
For the purpose of this piece, I have excluded the Grateful Dead’s canon by reason of volume along with radio archive and bootleg recordings. The ten records here are simply personal favourites.
The order here is chronological based on the date of the recording so let’s get going with number 10.
Number 10: Johnny Cash – Live at the Carousel Ballroom, San Francisco April 24 1968
In between the shows recorded for the legendary Live at Folsom Prison album in January 1968 and its release in May, Cash, accompanied by June Carter Cash and the Tennessee Three played a show at San Francisco’s Carousel Ballroom. A venue more known for hosting psychedelic rock acts, the Carousel provided to be the scene for an exceptional Cash show. The concert was recorded by Augustus Stanley Owsley III (aka Bear) a man with his own back story – LSD manufacturer, funder of the early Grateful Dead and sound innovator. It was finally released in 2021 as part of the Bear’s Sonic Journal series.
The quality of the recording is stunning with Cash and collaborators clear as a bell. Comprising a 27-song set including a five-song medley from June, the album covers Cash’s catalogue back to the beginning. He opens with Cocaine Blues leading into Long Black Veil and Orange Blossom Special. He plays a couple of Dylan covers and the sparks really fly for a classic Jackson. After June’s segment Cash takes it home with a string of crowd favourites finally closing with I Walk the Line.
Number 9: The Flying Burrito Brothers – Last Of The Red Hot Burritos (1971)
The Flying Burrito Brothers burned brightly from their formation but gradually fell apart over a period of three years. By the time of their 1971 tour, only Chris Hillam remained of the original band. He was joined by Rick Roberts, Al Perkins, Kenny Wertz and drummer Michael Clarke. The line-up was augmented by fiddle supremo Byron Berline and bass player Roger Bush who also played with Wertz in modern bluegrass band Country Gazette.
The blend of bluegrass with the core country-soul sound of the Burritos is at the core of Last Of The Red Hot Burritos. This is a live record that makes you feel you were there with some hot playing starting with Devil In Disguise. In the mid-section there is a three-song bluegrass segment – also including Orange Blossom Special – before moving back into the Cosmic American space for the remainder of the album. The standard of musicianship is first class throughout with Perkins in particular in cracking form. It’s only 34 minutes long and even on vinyl can leave the listener breathless.
Number 8: Gram Parsons & The Fallen Angels – Live 1973 (1982)
If Last of The Red Hot Burritos was tight but loose this recording of Gram Parsons and the Fallen Angels at a radio station in Hempstead, New York in March 1973 is a bit less of the former and a tad more of the latter. Parsons had just released his first solo record, GP, a couple of months earlier and got together the Fallen Angels to take it out on the road. In addition to Parsons, the group features Emmylou Harris on vocals, Jock Bartley, later of Firefall, on guitars, Neil Flanz on pedal steel, Kyle Tullis (bass) and the former Great Speckled Bird drummer ND Smart II.
The combined vocals of Parsons and Harris are front and centre of these recordings as they play the majority of the songs from GP as well as a stunning Love Hurts. The set is filled out with country classics and a nod back to Parsons’ time with the Byrds (Drug Store Truck Driving Man). They rock out too with a cracking Six Days On The Road and a concluding rock and roll medley.
Number 7: Laura Nyro – Season Of Lights (1976)
Next year will mark the 80th anniversary of Laura Nyro’s birth and the 30th of her premature death from ovarian cancer. In 1976, Nyro released her album Smile. It was her first since 1971’s Gonna Take A Miracle. Since then, she had married, divorced, lost her mother and moved out of New York to rural New England. To promote Smile, Nyro went out on the road with an extensive band which featured horns and percussion as well as guitar, bass and keyboards.
The record originally came out as a single album in 1977 but was re-issued in the originally envisaged double album format over 30 years later. Season Of Lights shows off Nyro’s consummate skill as singer, composer, player and arranger as she performs songs from throughout her career. You can sense the love from her audience in the warmth of the applause. Only two songs from Smile made it to the original album with six on the reissue.
Songs from the earlier records are rearranged to fit the band set up and this gives them a slightly jazzier feel. Nyro’s music can be hard to pin down but she started out a fan of doowop (other fans including Frank Zappa, Lou Reed and Lenny Kaye) and you can hear that in the melodies and phrasing as well as the journey through pop, R&B and soul as well as jazz. Nyro’s is a different blend of American music to that normally associated with americana, but it remains exceptional. If you’re going to listen to any version of Season Of Lights, go for the expanded version.
Number 6: Emmylou Harris and the Nash Ramblers – At The Ryman (1991)
Emmylou Harris had just broken up the Hot Band with whom she had been touring since the mid-1970s, and put together an all-star acoustic band, The Nash Ramblers. The group comprises Jon Randall Stewart (guitars, mandolin), Sam Bush (fiddle, mandolin) Al Perkins (banjo, guitars), Roy Huskey Jr (bass) and Larry Atamaniuk (drums, percussion). Harris and the Nash Ramblers recorded three dates at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, then in a poor state, in the spring of 1991.
The set covers traditional and modern American music with country, bluegrass and rock all well represented. As would expected with that band, the playing is exemplary. It met with reasonable commercial success after its release in January 1992 and also won a Grammy. The ease with which Harris and the Ramblers switch between songs and styles is seriously impressive.
Number 5: Lucinda Williams – Live @ the Fillmore (2003)
Lucinda Williams was out touring her World Without Tears album (2003) and recorded three nights at San Francisco’s legendary Fillmore Auditorium in November 2023. Over the next eighteen months or so, the recordings coalesced into Live @ The Fillmore, her first live recording released eventually in 2005. Backed by her core band Doug Pettibone (guitars, mandolin, harmonica), Taras Prodaniuk (bass) and Jo Christie (percussion, keyboards), Live @ The Fillmore stands as a record of an electric live act in top form.
Spread over two CDs and with a cover based on classic Fillmore poster art, the album presents Williams’ work reaching back to her early recordings but with a heavy slab of World Without Tears. The power of the music sits sweetly alongside the very live feel of the recording. One advantage of the CD format is the ability to house the equivalent of the full show experience in one set, including allowing Williams and band to extend out on several songs.
Number 4: Wilco – Kicking Television (Live in Chicago) (2005)
After the upheaval of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002) and A Ghost Is Born (2004) and associated personnel changes, Wilco had settled into the six piece that has continued to perform to the present day. The band comprises Jeff Tweedy (guitars, vocals). John Stirratt (bass, vocals) Nels Cline (guitars) Pat Sansone (guitars, keyboards), Mikael Jorgensen (keyboards) and Glenn Kotche (drums, percussion).
Kicking Television documents the new band’s live show mainly based around Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born but encompassing material back to the band’s debut A.M. It was recorded over four nights in May 2005 at Chicago’s Vic Theatre. The electricity that springs from the speakers is formidable. Another ‘child’ of the CD era, Wilco uses the 2 CD format to allow them to present the performances as a classic Wilco live show. The quality on offer from this set is hard to beat from the opening Misunderstood to the main set closer Spiders (Kidsmoke)
Number 3: Bonnie Bishop – Live @ Magnolia Avenue Salon, Fort Worth, TX June 9-10, 2006
In the early days of podcasts, they were a gateway to music from across the world without the limitations of domestic radio. I used to subscribe to a podcast from a Texas based radio station which is where, around 2005, I was introduced to the music of Texas singer- songwriter Bonnie Bishop. Her early records Long Way Home (2004) and Soft To The Touch (2005) were marked by the authenticity of her writing and her rich voice. In the summer of 2006, Bishop played a couple of nights at the Magnolia Avenue Salon in Fort Worth which were recorded for a live album released independently later that year. Bishop is backed by Geoff Queen (dobro, guitar), Colby Logan and Greg Whitfield (guitars, vocals) and Bruce Alford (percussion) Another 2CD set, the recording is marked by the intimacy of the venue (it is an actual hair salon) and Bishop’s rapport with her audience; especially as she chats between songs. Her own songs are mainly drawn from her two albums, although we get a preview of two from Things I Know eventually released in 2009.
Number 2: Calexico – Ancienne Belgique, Live in Brussels 2008
Calexico is a band who tours Europe regularly and many AUK readers will have seen them live over the past 25 years. In 2008, while touring their Carried To Dust album, they recorded a show at Brussels’ Ancienne Belgique and released it on their own Our Soil Our Strength label the following year. The touring band led by Joey Burns and John Convertino, was supplemented by special guests Jairo Zavala and Amparo Sanchez. The set is classic Calexico with rhythms and horns prominent. The album is full of the excitement and atmosphere of Calexico’s live performance. It mixes the new songs from Carried To Dust with classics from previous records including a cover of Love’s Alone Again Or and a breathless Crystal Frontier.
Number 1: Rising Appalachia – Alive (2017)
Rising Appalachia, the roots-driven string band built around sisters Chloe Smith and Leah Song, put out their Wider Circles album in 2015 and recorded several shows over the next couple of years, touring. These recordings were brought together on Alive which was released in 2017. The sisters are joined on the shows by regular collaborators David Brown (bass) and Biko Casini (percussion). Together they create a joyous swirl of the rhythm and harmony which are the hallmarks of Rising Appalachia’s sound. In many ways Alive typifies the in-the-moment joie-de-vivre of the live album, allowing the listener to close their eyes and experience the feel of being in the room enjoying the dynamics of performance and creation, often drawing on the memories of having seen the act in the flesh.
