But for me, Passaic 9/19/78 gets the edge as the definitive Springsteen live release, because it captures Bruce and his band at the absolute zenith of their powers when they still had something to prove. You could also go with other treasured live albums like Hammersmith Odeon London ’75 or the mammoth Live/1975-85 box set. All of those shows - or the bootleg from Winterland in San Francisco on that tour - are absolutely dynamite. There are number of shows that Bruce Springsteen performed on the Darkness On The Edge Of Town tour that started out as beloved bootlegs and have since been released via, including performances from Los Angeles, Houston, and Cleveland. So many have been lost already, due to all the canceled gigs we were supposed to see this year. I miss the music, but I also miss those one-of-kind fragments of time. More than anything while compiling this list, I treasured the live albums with the best moments - a funny anecdote shared before a song, a spontaneous scream in the midst of an intensely emotional performance, the sound of an audience held in thrall (or disgust) by what they’re hearing. (Even when they’re great, including these would make this process really complicated.)
No “bonus disc” live albums included on the umpteenth “special” edition of a classic album.(Trust me, it gets complicated otherwise.) If it’s not officially released, it wasn’t considered for this list. No egregiously overdubbed live albums.I refer to albums that include both studio cuts and live recordings, like Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma, U2’s Rattle & Hum, Willie Nelson’s Honeysuckle Rose, The Byrds’ Untitled, The Kinks’s Everybody’s In Show-Biz, and Cream’s Wheels Of Fire. I’m doing this in the interest of including as many different artists as possible, even if punishes those with multiple classic live albums, including the Grateful Dead, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, and Nina Simone. 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. 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. 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.
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