But if you’re going to undertake a task as serious as this one, you must have rules. I was bummed to leave off Bob Marley and the Wailers’ Live!, Santana’s Lotus, Queen’s Live Killers, Iron Maiden’s Live After Death, AC/DC’s If You Want Blood You Got It, Bob Seger’s Live Bullet, Black Lips’ Los Valientes del Mundo Nuevo, and so many more. There are so many, in fact, that many live albums I absolutely love did not make my list of the 50 greatest live records. And I’ve been happy to discover (and rediscover) just how many great live records there are. But I’ve also been digging into the classics. Luckily, there have been some really good live albums that have already come out this year, from Father John Misty, Hiss Golden Messenger, Drive-By Truckers, and others. We don’t have those moments right now, which means we’re not properly living. It will just be another piece of data to be streamed on demand. You can capture a video with your phone, but it’s not the same.
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Even a terrible concert is unique because it’s fleeting - once it’s gone, you can only hold on to it with your memories. How amazing would it be to once again gather with hundreds or thousands of strangers for a positive communal experience centered on life-fulfilling art? What once was commonplace now seems like science-fiction fantasy.Īt a show, you live in the moment, with no idea of what will happen next. But for those of us who feel spiritually and emotionally enriched by concerts, these hard times have made the dull ache that comes with being shut off from an essential part of life feel all the more acute. Amid all of the pain our country is currently enduring, this might seem like a minor inconvenience. Right now, we don’t have access to live music. But live albums have put me there, time and again. I can’t even experience those rooms now, or any other music venue, given the quarantine. I never had the chance to visit those places, at those times, in real life.
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Or Tokyo’s Budokan arena in the late ’70s. I like to imagine what it was like to be at the Village Vanguard in 1961. Sometimes, you can even hear the low hum of the room that it was recorded in. I like to hear the audience - their cheering, their catcalls, their off-beat clapping to the band. I appreciate the music, of course, but I also gravitate to the stuff around the music. They’ve been caricatured as redundant indulgences best left back in the bygone arena-rock era of the ’70s. “Greatest hits played faster” is how the ’80s indie band Camper Van Beethoven once dismissed them.