When they do essays or presentations, or when we do a class organized around videoclips they've suggested around a theme or genre, my students often turn me onto things I've never heard / heard of.
This is a sporadic blog series representing these oddities and gems.
Occasionally they turn me onto something I do know about but have not heard this particular iteration
So it is with the inaugural offering - a fantastic live version of "Born Under Punches" by Talking Heads (my #3 postpunk band back in the day, after PiL and Slits). It's concert footage but not from either of the live albums / concert movies.
Suddenly I'm not sure whether I ever saw the Jonathan Demme movie... bit remiss if not, for a postpunk historian.
The idea of the concert movie has never really appealed to me, though.
Nor - really - the live album.
Qs for the massive
1. What are the great concert movies?
(Don't bother to say The Last Waltz - it is great, in places, yet also hugely aggravating on account of Robbie Robertson's smugness - and the final bit of The Band's music on a soundstage, with no audience, is some kind of cultural crime, or at least all-time Top 10 case of legacy-self-enshitenment) *
2. What are the live albums worth bothering with?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
You don't believe me? Gird thy earholes and eyeholes
Ummm, are you sure that clip isn't from Live in Rome? Looks familiar, and the RAI Uno ident in the bottom right corner is suggestive.
ReplyDeleteCan't think of many concert films that anyone bar fans would bother with. The opening sequence of Nocturne (Siouxsie and the Banshees) where all the fans in their goth-punk finery are walking past the Royal Albert Hall ushers in their velvet-jacket finery to the sound of "The Rite of Spring" is great though.
Going to see Live at Pompeii (Pink Floyd) in the cinema in May for old time's sake, though I doubt I'll feel the same way about it as I did when I was fifteen. There's a brief homage to it in a Beastie Boys video ca. Ill Communication, if I recall correctly.
As for live albums, Space Ritual (Hawkwind) is the only one I can think of that is unequivocally the best thing the artist ever released. (I'm assuming that we're really talking rock bands here, live albums by jazz musicians feel like a different beast somehow)
I’ve never understood the antipathy so many people hold toward live albums.
ReplyDeleteCertainly in the realm of heavy rock / punk / metal (ie, genres reliant on high energy levels / random noise, and easily replicable on stage), they’re a pretty core part of many groups’ recorded output, and there are numerous examples of live albums being either the best recording by a band, or at least the best introduction / gateway to their studio output.
Hawkwind (as mentioned), The MC5, Iron Maiden, Motorhead, Thin Lizzy (infamously nearly entirely overdubbed in the studio, but still..), Neil Young & Crazy Horse, The Grateful Dead (if you like that sort of thing), Judas Priest, Cheap Trick, The Yardbirds… the list goes on.
You could even make an argument that many of The Velvet Underground’s best moments are found on their live albums / bootlegs.
Going further underground, there are numerous examples of key acts in the broader noisy realm whose live recordings are their best / most definitive output - Roky Erickson, Dead Moon, Saint Vitus, High Rise, Fushitsusha - just to list a few personal faves.
And then there are studio-phobic bands who have built up hallowed cult status entirely off the back of murky live recordings - Les Rallizes Denudes, Sonic’s Rendevouz Band…
In all of the above EGs, I think you can make the case that the rough / chaotic playing, variable recording quality, crowd noise, feedback etc of live recordings serve these bands’ aesthetic better than the clarity (I won’t say ‘sterility’) of the studio.
And yeah, what of the world of jazz, where “music created live in the moment / no overdubs” is a sacred principle, and much of the time the only thing differentiating ‘live’ from ‘studio’ is the presence of a paying audience…. but this is more than enough blather for the time being…
Think live albums should be banned.
ReplyDelete