Top 10 Live Albums of All Time
Over at Revolver, their readers declared that these are the Top 5 Live Albums of All Time:
Iron Maiden - Live After Death
Alice in Chains - Unplugged
Pantera- Official Live: 101 Proof
Metallica- Live Shit Binge and Purge
Kiss Alive
Uh, no.
Other Top Live Album Lists:
But to be honest with you, Live albums are notoriously tricky to rate. Why? Because what is your angle? Is it a band that can re-create album cuts with even greater fire and urgency than the studio version? Or is it a band, like the Grateful Dead, taking an album cut and adding a 15 minute jam to it?
Because we tend to lean more toward extreme music at Beacon of Speech, we left off trendy picks like Bob Dylan. I understand that Dylan is the Greatest Folk Artist of all-time, but we have a disdain for (most) Folk. Below are our picks with a brief sentence synopsis:
(1) In Case You Didn't Feel Like Showing Up (1990) / Necronomicon (2017) - Ministry
Between the copious amount of drugs, the army of musicians, and the fence, there was no more 'dangerous' tour... that sounded like a glorious wave of destruction.
Side Note: Necronomicon is simply the longer version of the 1990 realease.
(2) KISS Alive - KISS (1975)
The Gold Standard of Live albums.
(3) Alice in Chains (Unplugged) (1996)
The high water mark for the Unplugged Series on MTV wasn't Nirvana, but fellow Seatlers, Alice in Chains. They stripped their own songs down to their absolute core, with Got Me Wrong being the most outstanding example.
(4) Live and Cuddly - Nomeansno (1991)
Punk legends are notoriously poor sounding live, the Sex Pistols famously unplugged Sid Vicious' amp on particularly bad band performances. But there were no better punk musicians than Canada's Nomeansno and they showed it in on 1990's Live and Cuddly.
(5) Nirvana (Unplugged) (1994)
Near unanamous acclaim across all fans and critics.
(6) Loco Live - The Ramones (1991)
Almost 20 years in, and over 1,500 shows through, Loco Live was the historical document of Rock's ultimate road warriors, averaging about a hundred live shows a year over their career.
(7) Frampton Comes Alive - Peter Frampton (1976)
For one magical summer, Frampton had rolled out the perfect Classic Rock album. Is there such a thing as a 1-album wonder?
(8) Stop Making Sense - Talking Heads (1984)
Arguably the best Live Concert Film of all time.
(9) Live-Evil (1970) / The Cellar Door Sessions (2005) - Miles Davis
Live-Evil was a partial Live album that peaked at # 125 on the Rock Charts and # 4 on the Jazz Charts. The live portions of Live Evil were culled from The Cellar Door Sessions, which ended up being a 6 hour live box set released well after Davis' Death.
(10) Live at Budokan - Stormtroopers of Death (1992)
Walking the line between punk and thrash, S.O.D. get the nod at number 10 for a unique reason. During the show, Lead SInger Billy Milano climbed to the top of the corner speaker, about 15 feet in the air, then jumped into the pit while he's singing. A fan wouldn't let him go, so Milano punched the guy in the noggin a few times. If you listen closely to the live CD, you can HEAR the sound of Milano punching the fan in the head.
Those are sounds that are hard to re-create in the studio.
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