Live albums, a lot of people doesn’t like them, I love’em! I am not very concerned with sound quality. What I mean is that I like good sound on the recordings, but a lot of factors that are more important; the “feel”, the energy, the collection of songs and the general performance. It is nice to have good quality, but sometimes the energy of a show comes through even on bad recorded concerts.

When I decided to make this list I also made the decision not to do a “critics” list, my list should be made of my “love of the album”, not it’s place in history. It has to be a list of albums that I enjoy listening to, records that excite me, that has good versions of familiar songs and fantastic versions of songs that maybe isn’t that good on the studio albums.

Some of the albums will have long posts other will have shorter descriptions and more videos, all depending on my mood.

Should I include bootlegs?
At first I meant to do that, but I will do another list with my favourite unofficial live albums and outtakes. This list consists of legal, officially released live material.

Some of the records where bootlegs at some point, but have been released officially at a later stage. I have chosen to not limit my choice to one album per artist. If an artist have more than one live album that should be considered, well I have considered all of them and included them if I think they belong on the list.

When we did our lists of albums by favourite artists to include on our About us page, we decided not to include live albums. But we did, I included one and Egil included two! I included At Folsom Prison by Johnny Cash. Now, you would think that this meant that it has to be my favourite live album. That is not the case. That list was limited to just one album per artist, and therefore gives a wrong impression. It is not a list of favourite albums. If it where I believe Egil would have three or four more Dylan albums on his list, I would also have included more than one album by some artists.

What I’m trying to explain is that there are artists on that list that have better live albums than At Folsom Prison (not many, but they do exist…).

My list has Spotify links if the albums are on Spotify, and I have included YouTube videos from the concerts recorded when I have found them.

The first entry will be posted later today…

– Hallgeir

Posts in this series:
Introduction
27. On Stage by Elvis Presley
28. One for the road by The Kinks
29. Waiting for Columbus by Little Feat
30. Wings over America by Wings