In many ways the Best Live Albums Polls are the heart of the Best Live Albums Blog.
It is your chance to help other readers (and me) find the best live albums by voting for your favourites from a list.
Best live albums polls exist in two categories at the moment – by music genre (e.g. heavy metal or singer songwriter) or by group (e.g. Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin).
The roles of these polls is slightly different. The genre polls gives you a chance to broaden your musical tastes within a broad category,. There are definitely grey areas here and I hadn’t realised how difficult it would be to try to explain some of my genre decisions.
The polls by group let you dig deeper into a group you already like but may mean that you cross genre. For example Genesis moved from progressive rock to classic rock to pop rock as Peter Gabriel left and Phil Collins became a solo superstar.
You can vote for as many as you want up to a maximum allowed by the poll.
I’m also keen to hear about great live albums that I’ve missed from the nominees in the polls.
The category presents the polls in the order of their publication date. You may find it easier to look at the polls that best match the type of music you like by using the Best Live Albums Polls list.
These nice things about lists is that while they are helpful to find the best live recorded music, they will inevitably cause controversy. I encourage you to join in the debate by first voting and then leaving a comment to explain your views.
What do you think are the best country and country rock live albums?
My knowledge in the area of country and country rock is fairly weak, partly because I’m based in the UK and we have no tradition of country music as opposed to folk music.
I’m also not sure where the dividing line between country and country rock lies. I’ve tried to split the genre into two to help you to find the other albums that are most likely to appeal to you.
James Brown released a lot of live albums but what are the best? Which James Brown live albums would you advise someone to buy?
The obvious answer is Live At The Apollo 1962 but is that really representative of the legacy that James Brown has left? I don’t think so.
You can vote for your three favourites and if you think I’ve missed a great one from my poll, leave me a comment and I’ll add it in. Continue reading What Is The Best James Brown Live Album?
This page asks readers to vote in two polls to find:
What Are The Best Live Albums By Led Zeppelin?
What do you think is the best live album released by Led Zeppelin?
Now that Celebration Day has been released there are four Led Zeppelin live albums to choose but will it come top of the poll or will people revert to BBC Sessions, How The West Was Won or The Song Remains The Same?
I’d like to think that there are more archive recordings of Led Zeppelin concerts on the way. I was reading that Jimmy Page has been working on creating special edition packages of the studio albums. Other artists sometimes include a live album as a bonus.
I’d love to hear a Led Zeppelin live album from the Physical Graffiti tour with Kashmir, Trampled Underfoot and Houses Of The Holy. I’d also like to hear what they did with songs from Presence and especially Achilles Last Stand live.
Please vote in my readers poll to find out what popular opinion believes to be the best classic rock live albums.
Classic rock is music that has its roots in the music of the 1960s and 1970s and may refer to
When I was creating these polls I had to face up to various grey areas as band cross genres and it’s a harder job assigning genres than I expected. I also made a rule that I didn’t want to include albums in more than two categories although there are a few exceptions like Waiting For Columbus by Little Feat. That’s includes in the polls for Southern rock and blues rock as well as this one because it’s not atypical of any of them.
Are Led Zeppelin a blues rock group or a hard rock / heavy metal group? I think they are both and there are readers polls for both that you can vote for the Led Zeppelin live albums from the 1970s. I feel they are too extreme for this classic rock category.
However I have included Celebration Day as classic rock. By this stage the band had mellowed and started playing versions of songs that most frequently appeared on classic rock radio without changing or extending them much.
Other groups like The Who and The Rolling Stones stopped being hard rock or blues rock when their best years were behind them and they concentrated on their best known songs. I love The Who Live At Leeds but I feel it’s too raucous and thundering for this category and fits much better into the hard rock category. The classic rock from The Who is more the CSI style of tunes from Who’s Next onwards.
There are several hard rock albums that I have included in this poll because I believe the song structure and tunefulness of the albums makes them suitable for the mainstream “classic rock” fan. Live And Dangerous by Thin Lizzy is well known, at least in the UK but Strangers In The Night by UFO is perhaps is an undiscovered treasure for many.
This could get contentious but I’d like to hear your thoughts. My master plan is to find the best live albums by music genre and group and bring the winners together into one best live album summary (see the 74 Greatest Live Albums Ever Recorded & Released.)
My definition of the best classic rock albums therefore becomes something of a catch-all for albums that don’t fit neatly elsewhere. It includes Frampton Comes Alive because I can’t think of a more suitable category. It also includes The Eagles live albums Hell Freezes Over and The Eagles Live because, despite their inclusion in the Best Country Rock Live Albums Poll, I suspect that purists won’t see it as country rock.
As a general rule, if an album fits a category better than classic rock, it goes into that category but some groups and albums cross-over into the mainstream. Pink Floyd are included in the poll to find the best prog rock live album but their album Pulse is also included here.
Some groups and artists just are classic rock. I’m thinking of groups like The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Queen, Dire Straits, Steely Dan and the Buckingham Nicks version of Fleetwood Mac. Songwriters like Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger, Tom Petty, Paul McCartney and Elton John are classic rock. Other groups appear to have a more formulaic approach and I’ve treated these as AOR Bands like Journey and Foreigner but I could be convinced to include them here as well.
I’m trying to pick out my five essential live albums for each genre on the following basis:
My hard rock selections included Strangers In The Night by UFO and Live And Dangerous by Thin Lizzy so they are excluded from consideration here.
I must have some Bruce Springsteen and sticking to artist approved albums, that could easily be Hammersmith Odeon ’75, Cleveland 1978 or Nassau Coliseum from 1980. With some regret, I’m focusing on the Darkness tour album at the Agora in Cleveland.
After that I hit a few dilemmas. Can I leave Floyd to progressive rock, Supertramp and Roxy Music to art rock, David Bowie too?
Do Queen have a live album that I love enough when, despite two archive releases we don’t have a live recording heavy with songs from A Night At The Opera? Live At The Rainbow and A Night At The Odeon are treats for fans of early Queen but neither makes the cut although one might have managed an entry in my ten favourite classic rock live albums.
What about The Beatles? There’s no late 1960s live albums from them because they stopped performing live concerts but John Lennon and Paul McCartney released live albums in the 1970s and McCartney has continued to release live albums heavy with Beatles tunes. I feel his best band was from Tripping The Live Fantastic tour but the double CD had too many non-essential songs and the Highlights album had essential songs missing. I saw that tour and the Back In The World tour which had even more Beatles song but I can’t ignore the charms of Wings Over America. His post Beatles songs sound much better live than they do on the studio albums and the band can rock.
The Who don’t have an unmissable post Who’s Next live album from the mid 1970s but The Blues To The Bush made it into my top five hard rock live albums, along with The Who Love At Leeds. I’ve included The Brussels Affair by The Rolling Stones in my five selections for blues rock.
I don’t feel I can ignore David Bowie. There is such a distinct flavour to each of his live albums and whilst I feel the early 1970s Ziggy influenced albums will fit neatly in glam rock and the late 1970s are art rock, the remixed version of David Live is much too good to ignore.
The two early live albums by Wishbone Ash are highly recommended, Live Dates and Live Dates 2. My love for the Argus studio album tips my selection to the original Live Dates.
Four albums selected, one to go.
Rod Stewart, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, The Kinks, Bob Seger, Dire Straits, Elton John, Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, U2, Crowded House, Nils Lofgren, Deacon Blue and others to think about.
Dylan and Young are featured in my singer songwriter selections. Some artists aren’t helping themselves. U2 haven’t made a general release from the Zoo Europa tour, there isn’t a proper live album by Rod Stewart and The Faces from the early 1970s but an equivalent box set to Tonight’s The Night Live 1976 to 1998 would be hard to resist. Nils Lofgren hasn’t released Night After Night as an affordable CD.
I’m going to have to give this more thought.
My five favourite classic rock live albums:
What Are The Best Classic Rock Live Albums? Continue reading What Are The Best Classic Rock Live Albums?
Can any album topple Live & Dangerous from being the best Thin Lizzy live album? probably not but what is the second best?
Please vote for your two favourite Thin Lizzy live albums. Continue reading What is The Best Thin Lizzy Live Album?
Ultimate Classic Rock is giving you the chance to vote in their best live album of 2012 poll.
The nominees are:
Bachman and Turner – Live at the Roseland Ballroom, NYC
Big Brother and the Holding Company – Live at the Carousel Ballroom 1968 Continue reading Ultimate Classic Rock Best Live Album of 2012
Please vote in my readers poll to find out what popular opinion believes to be the best singer-songwriter live albums.
Putting together these readers polls by music genre has forced me to confront various grey areas where one type of music merges into another.
My first thought is that a singer-songwriter is a man or woman with an acoustic guitar who performs songs he or she has written themselves.
You can then start adding a small backing group, especially if the emphasis is still on acoustic instruments.
Some singer songwriters use electric guitars and turn up the volume and start rocking.
At some stage you need to confront the issue of how a singer songwriter with a backing band differs from a band with one main singer songwriter who isn’t billed separately. For example John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival is the lead vocalist, lead guitarist and primary songwriter. I don’t think many would expect to see CCR in this poll. It’s a similar case with Paul McCartney and Wings.
There are therefore singer songwriter live albums by artists like Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band and Bob Dylan & The Band that I believe belong more in classic rock than in this poll e.g. Live 1975/85 and Before The Flood.
Neil Young has released a number of excellent live albums. The acoustic Massey Hall obviously qualifies, Live Rust squeezes in but Weld is much more suitable to the best hard rock category.
I want to hear what you think about the albums I’ve selected and excluded. You could convince me that I’m wrong.
Further down the page, you’ll find a poll to vote for your favourites. In fact, there is a second division poll as well of less well known albums that also deserve your attention. Continue reading Best Singer Songwriter Live Albums
A few days ago (November 2012) Rolling Stone magazine and website asked readers to vote for the best live albums of all time. It doesn’t say how many people voted.
The results were fairly predictable and dominated by albums from the 1970s heyday with The Who classic from 1970 at #1 Continue reading Rolling Stone Readers Poll Of The 10 Best Live Albums
Please vote in my readers poll to find the best Rory Gallagher live album.
This includes his early recordings with Taste.
The Competition To Find The Best Rory Gallagher Live Album
There are some early live recordings of Rory Gallagher with his band, Taste including his performance at the Isle Of Wight Festival in 1970 when, some say, he blew Jimi Hendrix off the stage and Live Taste in the same year..
In the early seventies after branching out on his own, he continued playing blues rock and recorded two highly acclaimed live albums, Rory Gallagher Live In Europe and Irish Tour.
He then changed direction and reduced the blues and emphasised the rock side of his performances and recorded Stagestruck.
What is the best AC/DC live album? If You Want Blood gets plenty of praise but is it the live recording that fans think is best?
For a band with such a great reputation and with the loss of their lead singer, Bon Scott when they were hitting their heights, there are surprisingly few live albums.
If You Want Blood You’ve Got It gets lots of praise from the critics but it was recorded in April 1978 and therefore misses content from studio albums such as Highway To Hell (with Scott), and Back in Black and For Those About To Rock.
1977 Live From the Atlantic Studios
1978 If You Want Blood You’ve Got It
1979 Let There Be Rock The Movie – Live in Paris –
1990/91 AC/DC Live
2009 Live At River Plate