Favorite Live Albums

[JWGunslinger]

Pretty self explanatory, what is your favorite live album by any band and why?

Here's mine

Metallica's S&M Album
Metallica's 1999 live album S&M is in my opinion Metallica's best album and one of the greatest successful blends of two genres in history. Metallica played this gig at the Berkley Community Theatre with the San Francisco Symphony, the instruments were amazing, this is also my favorite album for James Hetfeild's vocals and came out to great reviews. Just the fact that Metallica managed to take two genres that couldnt be farther apart and blend them into such a perfect show still blows my mind. I would go on about it but words cannot describe how great this entire album is, you need to hear it yourself; especially if you're a Metallica fan who has never heard it. Here is one of the songs from this epic performance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KtF7ql3FJc

 

[Hollywood Naitch]

Another Live album I am a big fan of, and forgot about until recently is Bryan Adams' MTV Unplugged album.

I heard this album at a pretty young age, well before I became familiar with his music as my Mum had it and played it constantly in the car. I knew the acoustic "Summer of 69" BEFORE I knew the classic Original version!

It has all Adams' most famous songs in acoustic style, and works really really well. A couple of the songs came up on my ITunes Shuffle yesterday, and I realised how good they were, so I listened to the whole album and it brought back loads of nice memories. Plus, the album has my favourite of all Bryan's work- "Back To You". That was a single only ever released from the unplugged album, and it is awesome.

[YOUTUBE]UMe7WdK-XKo[/YOUTUBE]

 

[Davi323]

This is a tough one. I like old school classic rock, so all of my favorites will be in that genre:

10. Cheap Trick: Live at Budokan
9. Lynyrd Skynyrd: One More for the Road
8. Jackson Browne: Running on Empty
7. Peter Frampton: Frampton comes alive
6. Ozzy Osbourne: Tribute
5. The Who: Live at Leeds
4. Queen: Live at Wembley
3. U2: Under a Blood Red Sky
2. Johnny Cash: At Folsom Prison
1. Eric Clapton: Unplugged

There are so many good classic rock live albums, it was hard to choose...but if I remember right, Clapton Unplugged won 5 or 6 grammys, and it contains my two favorite Eric Clapton songs ever, Tears in Heaven and the acoustic version of Layla.

 

[SorgFamily]

Definitely Nirvana Unplugged. Such a great album full of obscure cover songs. "Jesus Don't Want Me For A Sunbeam", "Man Who Sold the World" and who expected the grunge band that had the biggest effect on mainstream music to end the show with an old blues number, "Where Did You Sleep Last Night". And then you put the Meat Puppet covers (which are arguably the best part of the album) and the couple of originals they performed and you have one mighty fine album. I read that afterwords they were backstage and the production staff wanted them to go back on and do an encore but Kurt said, "There's no way we could top that last song". And he was right. It was performed flawlessly and that scream from Kurt, "I would shiverrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...." good stuff.

After that I would put Pearl Jam: Live at The Gorge 05/06. It's seven discs of three shows (two in '05 and one in '06) and Vedder has complete control of the crowd. I own a ton of Pearl Jam live albums and they are one of the greatest live bands (along with DMB, Phish and The Dead) but on these shows they were on fire. At one point Vedder leads a call and response with the crowd of sounds. He's not singing anything he's just making noises and they are loving it. Plus I think it's the only album with live cuts from "Pearl Jam" the album. World Wide Suicide and the likes.

 

[Alex]

Nirvana Unplugged and Alice In Chains Unplugged.

Both these bands seemed the type that couldn't really pull of an acoustic show (Nirvana moreso than AiC) yet they still managed to put on great performances which are seen as great acoustic sets (especially since both bands singers were having problems with drugs at the time)

 

[Dowdsy McDowds]

Seeing as Alex already covered two of my favourite albums I'll pick some different ones.

Jeff Buckley - Live at L'Olympia
Rage Against The Machine - Live at the Grand Olympic Auditorium
Sigur Ros - Heima (technically it's a DVD but the live performances throughout places in Iceland are all so well filmed and performed)

This last one's a bit cheeky, but Rant in E Minor by Bill Hicks. It's not a music album and not completely live, but hopefully I'll be let off with this technicality?

 

[Fizzy]

^^^ Dude I LOVE Sigur Ros. Easily the most chill music I have ever listened to in my entire life.

Anyways, my favorite live albums would be Avenged Sevenfold: Live in the LBC. Every song was absolutely amazing and performed perfectly. The performance of Unholy Confessions is my favorite live song of all time. I loved every minute of that DVD, and it shows why I love that band so much.

Another of my favorites is (Sic)ness by Slipknot. Corey Taylor is so good at working the crowd. It was nuts. When they played Duality and the entire audience started singing with them, I got goosebumps. Just a surreal performance by a fantastic band and frontman.

 

[Dowdsy McDowds]

^^^ Dude I LOVE Sigur Ros. Easily the most chill music I have ever listened to in my entire life.

Yeh man, at uni I had to make a video of some guys doing a sponsored walk in the highlands (of Scotland) and set it to Glosoli, worked so well! Probably that and Saeglopur are my favourite 'walking' songs of theirs.

 

[Simo]

Pantera's Official Live: 101 Proof

The band's on top form, and some of the live versions of the songs I prefer to the CD version, like "Sandblasted Skin".

 

[RManske2]

There is another live Nirvana CD that I'm a big fan of and it's "Live at Reading" and there are about 22-23 songs I like (guessing off the top of my head) that covers a wide range of the well-known Nirvana songs and some lesser known tracks before they made it big.

 

[.]

Seether - One Cold Night

Such a simple yet great album in my opinion. It's just Shaun Morgan on acoustic guitar and Dale Stewart on drums. All the songs they performed were very well done and it was surprising to hear some of their more heavier songs sound so great acoustically. Morgan didn't attempt to do anything amazing as the crowd was already hot for them. Overall a great listen.