Tag: Live albums

October 8 – Desert Island Album Draft, Round 10: Bob Marley & the Wailers – Live at the Roxy

I’m participating in an album draft with nine other bloggers, organized by Hanspostcard. There will be ten rounds (though rumors abound of three bonus rounds), with draft order determined randomly by round. Deciding what albums to choose has become increasingly difficult over the past few rounds, and now it’s down to one. With apologies to solo McCartney and Lennon, Van the Man, Miles, Coltrane, Croz, Elton, U2, Sinatra, David Freaking Bowie, and many others – hell, I even considered the first Van Halen album as a tribute to the late, great Eddie – I’ve decided on a Bob for my second pick in a row. This time it’s the Marley varietal. The deciding factor? I’m going to an island. I’ll want some reggae.

Bob Marley - On May 26th, during the 1976 Rastaman... | Facebook

Bob Marley was long gone before I actually heard him sing. I vaguely remember hearing Clapton’s version of I Shot the Sheriff when it was current, but don’t recall hearing Marley’s name or even the word “reggae” until the early 80’s. I grew up in a small midwestern town, and other than university towns the genre didn’t make inroads there until the mid/late 80’s. I’d read his name in Rolling Stone various times throughout that decade before finally buying Legend around 1986. I loved it instantly and began collecting Marley albums. If I had one shred of hip cred in high school (which is definitely a stretch), it’s a result of introducing reggae to some of my small burg high school mates. I even got Could You Be Loved played at a school dance. Big time, folks. It’s funny looking back at my mulleted self – I only knew about Marley, Jimmy Cliff, and UB40. So hip.

Bob Marley & the Wailers - Live at the Roxy - Amazon.com Music

Marley released albums that are more legendary than Live at the Roxy. In fact, this album – simulcast live on L.A.’s KMET on May 26, 1976 and heavily bootlegged as a result – wasn’t officially released until 2003. But I like live reggae the most, and this show is legendary. It was a VIP event, and as Robert Hilburn noted in his LA Times review of the show, it was attended by John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Neil Diamond, Robbie Robertson, Bernie Taupin, John Bonham, Linda Ronstadt, Harry Nilsson, Carole King, Art Garfunkel, Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, and others. To have been a fly in the club, floating around from table to table on clouds of ganja smoke… (Side note: the famous backstage photos of the brief Marley/George Harrison summit were taken at the Roxy the previous year.)

Official Bob Marley Marijuana Is Coming | Money

If you like Marley then you probably know most if not all of this music. The recording itself sounds like it was done from my living room. You can sense the intimacy of the performance, delivered in its entirety on this release. The highlight for me is the second disc which contains the encore: a 24 minute medley of Get Up, Stand Up/No More Trouble/War. Relevant as ever, though I must admit I look forward to a day when I can return to listening to these songs without thinking too much about the message.

Tracklist

Disc 1:

  1. Intro
  2. Trenchtown Rock
  3. Burnin’ and Lootin’
  4. Them Belly Full (but We Hungry)
  5. Rebel Music (3 o’clock Road Block)
  6. I Shot the Sheriff
  7. Want More
  8. No Woman, No Cry
  9. Lively Up Yourself
  10. Roots, Rock, Reggae
  11. Rat Race

Disc 2

  1. Positive Vibration
  2. Get Up, Stand Up/No More Trouble/War

-Stephen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_at_the_Roxy_(Bob_Marley_and_the_Wailers_album)

*Note about the following link: it is a wordpress post which contains a link to the Robert Hilburn/L.A. Times review of the concert. I was unable to post that link to the review for some reason.

https://marleyarkives.wordpress.com/2012/02/18/bob-marley-and-the-wailers-go-hollywood-roxy-1976/

September 4 – Live Raunch from The Rolling Stones

9/4/70: The Rolling Stones – Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out! The Rolling Stones in Concert

“Paint it Black, you devils!”

When the Rolling Stones began their U.S. tour in November 1969, it marked their first concert appearances here since 1966. The music landscape had changed quite a bit in that time, including live shows. For the major acts, the venues had become larger and the amplification louder. The non-stop shrill screaming of teenage girls had ceased as the crowds were now slightly older. And stoned. Enter the world’s most famous musical band of outlaws, now flaunting their badness more openly and brashly than ever. It was Mick Taylor’s first tour as a member of the band, and the last one they would embark upon as just the principal band (including Ian Stewart) without additional musicians. The joy and the horror of that month-long tour was captured for eternity on the Maysles brothers’ documentary, Gimme Shelter. The live album from those dates, Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out: The Rolling Stones in Concert, was released 50 years ago today.

Back cover of Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

The release of this album was largely a response to the bootleg recording Live’r Than You’ll Ever Be from their Oakland, CA show near the start of the tour, which is considered the first major live bootleg album. Ya-Ya’s as originally released contains 10 of the 15 songs which made up their usual set list, including two Chuck Berry covers and one by Robert Johnson. The performances were taken from their November 27th and 28th shows at Madison Square Garden, with Love in Vain from the 26th in Baltimore. Overdubbing of vocals on six tracks and guitars on two took place at Olympic Studios in January 1970. The album reached number one in the U.K., and number six in the U.S.

The Rolling Stones in Chicago: A timeline of the band's 55-year fascination with the city's blues - Chicago Tribune

I should probably let it go, but if you’ve read my posts in the past you might know I tend to grumble at the self-importance of contemporary reviewers of these albums that have attained “classic” status, but the fact is that the views of scribes for publications such as Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, the L.A. Times, etc., held a lot of weight back in the day. It was no different with this live document. Lester Bangs, in his contemporary review in Rolling Stone – in which he criticized late-60’s live acts for being either too sloppy or too clinical (insert eye-roll emoji) – asked this question at the outset of his album review having seen the show himself:

Sure, the Stones put on what was almost undoubtedly the best show of the year, but did that say more about their own involvement or about the almost uniform lameness of the competition? 

Criterion Channel on Twitter: "Albert and David Maysles's Direct Cinema landmark GIMME SHELTER captures the Rolling Stones near the end of their 1969 U.S. tour, at a free outdoor concert in San

Their competition aside, I feel there’s everything to like about the album. I put a lot of value on overall context, and the Stones were close to the heart of arguably their wildest and most arrogant years. To my ears, their irreverence is evident from the outset when Charlie’s drumming kicks in seemingly a half beat behind on Jumpin’ Jack Flash (I mean, they could’ve fixed that in the studio if they’d wanted to, right?). Love in Vain is a highlight for me for Taylor’s solo alone (Bangs called the track a low point of the album…). The guitars of Richards and Taylor drive Midnight Rambler to heights not heard on Let it Bleed, which was released the day before Altamont (though I do prefer the studio version of Live with Me from that album over the one on Ya-Ya’s). We don’t really even need the film to visualize Mick prancing around to it, either. It’s a showstopping performance.

The Rolling Stones Fall 1969 Tour - Rolling Stone

They kick into Sympathy for the Devil after the girl in the audience (Bangs refers to her as “an insistent chick”) shouts at the devils to play Paint it Black. It all seems funny and well timed, but it’s hard to listen to without thinking of its place in the Altamont show a few weeks in the future when Keith stops mid-song to admonish the Hell’s Angels. His playing on this one makes up for the absence of “woo-woo’s” heard on the studio version. I used to look at the Chuck Berry covers as throwaways, but now I see them as grittier takes on what were, for the late 1950’s, eyebrow raising songs. This album actually sounds better to me now than when I was younger, with or without the “bonus” tracks added in 2009. And, for what it’s worth, Lester Bangs’s answer to his own question was:

It’s still too soon to tell, but I’m beginning to think Ya-Ya’s just might be the best album they ever made. I have no doubt that it’s the best rock concert ever put on record. The Stones, alone among their generation of groups, are not about to fall by the wayside. And as long as they continue to thrive this way, the era of true rock and roll music will remain alive and kicking with them. 

The Who say hi, but he wasn’t far off the mark.

Tracklist

Side One:

  1. Jumpin’ Jack Flash
  2. Carol
  3. Stray Cat Blues
  4. Love in Vain
  5. Midnight Rambler

Side Two:

  1. Sympathy for the Devil
  2. Live with Me
  3. Little Queenie
  4. Honkey Tonk Women
  5. Street Fighting Man

-Stephen

Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out

https://ultimateclassicrock.com/rolling-stones-get-yer-ya-yas-out/

https://www.allmusic.com/album/get-yer-ya-yas-out%21-mw0000191518

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_Yer_Ya-Ya%27s_Out!_The_Rolling_Stones_in_Concert

May 1970, Pt. 4 – The Who and the Definitive Live Rock Album

5/23/70: The Who – Live at Leeds

Inching toward summer 1970, The Who released what is still widely considered the greatest live rock album of all time (with all due respect to fans of live albums by Humble Pie, the Stones, Frampton, Cheap Chick, Deep Purple, and others), and one of the best rock albums, period. The band recorded several shows on tour supporting 1969’s Tommy, but 2,100 capacity Leeds University Refectory and Hull City Hall were booked in February specifically to record a live album.

The Who - Live At Leeds [LP] - Amazon.com Music

Live at Leeds was originally planned as a double album to include the Tommy set, but of the 33 songs performed in the show, Pete Townshend decided on a single, six-song release, with snippets of See Me, Feel Me and Sparks from the 1969 rock opera heard in the stretched out version of My Generation at the beginning of side two. Clocking in at just over 37 minutes as originally released, Live at Leeds captures the frenetic energy and violence of The Who’s live performances arguably at the band’s live peak.

The Vinyl Issue: The Who's Live At Leeds | Louder

Over the course of four reissues in the following 40 years, Leeds went on to include the Tommy set, the complete Hull show from the following night, and finally the entire Leeds show in correct running order for the first time. I actually owned the Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970 release from 1996 before I ever gave a serious listen to Leeds, and without wading into the audiophile muck of production pros and cons that largely don’t interest me, I don’t feel there’s too much difference in the feel of the album aside from the fact that the Isle of Wight release contains Tommy.

Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970 (The Who album) - Wikipedia

The trend over the years of adding previously unreleased material, live or studio, when reissuing albums is something that has been interesting, exciting, and maddening. I’ve reached the point where expanded reissues are no longer automatic must haves. I’ve come around on originals prior to the add-ons. Live at Leeds in its original form is great for those occasions when you want to crank up some live Who to get yer ya-ya’s out but don’t necessarily want to listen to Tommy, which has its time and place for me.

What’s your favorite live album of all time of any genre? Do you value expanded reissues?

Tracklist

Side A:

  1. Young Man Blues
  2. Substitute
  3. Summertime Blues
  4. Shakin’ All Over

Side B:

  1. My Generation
  2. Magic Bus

-Stephen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_at_Leeds

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_at_the_Isle_of_Wight_Festival_1970_(The_Who_album)