40 years ago today, Peter Frampton released “Frampton Comes Alive!” and it became the best-selling album of 1976.
The ’70s were the era of the live album. the ’70s were the live album’s golden age.
The gauntlet was thrown down in May 1970 by a pair of future live classics released only a week apart.The Who‘sLive at Leeds and the triple live album Woodstock soundtrack brought the show into kids’ bedrooms better than anything that had come before, and both were rewarded with stellar sales and critical praise. A format that was once reserved for contractual filler or stopgap releases was suddenly fashionable. Before the year ended, the Rolling Stones released “Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!”; before the decade ended, we had live releases from the Beatles, LedZeppelin, Ted Nugent andAerosmith. It was a status symbol, an indicator of commercial clout: The bigger you were, the more likely your discography sported a live album.
In the middle of the decade, another pair of live albums changed the paradigm. Both featured artists whose recording careers were floundering but who did well on the road. With one last chance to catch on with the record buying public. The first was the September 1975 release of Kiss Alive! Three months later (and also sporting an exclamation point), A&M Records released former Humble Pie guitarist Peter Frampton‘s concert masterpiece, “Frampton Comes Alive!”
Frampton was a prodigy who counted David Bowie among his childhood friends. By age 18 he’d already tasted success with the Herd and had formed Humble Pie with Steve Marriott . Together they would record four studio albums before jumping on the ’70s live LP bandwagon with another classic live album “Performance Rockin’ the Fillmore” at the end of 1971. It would be Humble Pie’s most successful album, but the band’s hotshot guitarist was gone before it was even released.
At the tender age of 21, Frampton had two successful bands in his rear-view mirror and a limitless road ahead of him. His first solo album, 1972’s Wind of Change, eschewed the muscular boogie of Humble Pie for a more acoustic, singer-songwriter vibe . Songs like the album’s title cut introduced the new, mellow Frampton while “It’s a Plain Shame” and a cover of the Stones’ “Jumpin’ Jump Flash” seemed tailored for his established fan base. In other words, the album was neither fish nor fowl, and sales were disappointing.
It was nearly 40 years ago, back on November 25th, 1976, on Thanksgiving Day at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, The Band (Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel and Robbie Robertson ) performed a concert known as The Last Waltz. The Last Waltz was advertised as the Band’s “farewell concert appearance”, goers saw The Band joined by more than a dozen special guests, including Bob Dylan, Paul Butterfield, Neil Young, Emmylou Harris, Ringo Starr, Ronnie Hawkins, Dr. John, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Muddy Waters, Ronnie Wood, Neil Diamond, Bobby Charles, The Staple Singers, and Eric Clapton. The musical director for the concert was the Band’s original record producer, John Simon.
More than likely we’ve all seen the documentary film titled “The Last Waltz” which includes excerpts of the concert and the Martin Scorsese interviews, which is a great work, but I thought today we might just like to go to the full 4hr.+ concert.
On November 7th, 1983, U2 released the fantastic live album, Under a Blood Red Sky, an 8 song live album that defined U2 as a live act (yet people were still surprised when U2 played Live-Aid 2 years later). The album consists of live recordings from three shows on the band’s “War Tour”
A live recording that features real danger. When U2 played Red Rocks Amphitheatre outside Denver on June 5th, 1983, the weather was so terrible that less than half the sold out crowd showed up, and both opening acts (the Alarm and Divinyls) canceled over safety concerns. That did nothing to deter U2 and especially Bono. In 2004, guitarist The Edge told Rolling Stone that Bono “scared the shit out of me” by climbing a lighting rig to wave a white flag during “The Electric Co.,” coming close to live wires. But the real lightning came from this live album, concert film and the fog-shrouded “Sunday Bloody Sunday” music video. Even though most of Under a Blood Red Sky’s album tracks came from shows in Boston and Germany, the Red Rocks visuals stand as U2’s last moment of young, ragged glory before mega-stardom set in. “It was a benchmark,” said Adam Clayton.
You can watch the accompanying concert film “U2 Live at Red Rocks: Under a Blood Red Sky“, whose release helped establish U2’s reputation for putting pathos into their live performances, and one particular performance—that of the track “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, is considered by some to be of the greatest moments in Rock and Roll.
Tracklist:
Gloria
11 O’Clock Tick Tock
I Will Follow
Party Girl
Sunday Bloody Sunday
The Electric Co.
New Year’s Day
40″
Recorded during their American tour in late 1969, and centered around live versions of material from the Beggars Banquet-Let It Bleed era. Often acclaimed as one of the top live rock albums of all time, its appeal has dimmed a little today… it’s certainly the Stones’ best official live recording.
Released 4th September 1970. Recorded 26th November 1969, at Baltimore,Maryland, United States and 27th–28th November 1969, New York City, New York, United States. Having not toured since April 1967, The Rolling Stones were eager to hit the road by 1969. With their two most recent albums, Beggars Banquet and Through the Past, Darkly (Big Hits Vol. 2) being highly praised, audiences were anticipating their live return. Their 1969 American Tour’s trek during November into December, with Terry Reid, B.B. King (replaced on some dates by Chuck Berry) and Ike and Tina Turner as supporting acts, played to packed houses. The tour was the first for Mick Taylor with the Stones, having replaced Brian Jones shortly before Jones’ death in July; the performances prominently showcased the guitar interplay of Taylor with Keith Richards. The title of the album was adapted from the song “Get Yer Yas Yas Out” by Blind Boy Fuller. The phrase used in Fuller’s song was “get your yas yas out the door”.
“Charlie’s good tonight, in’int he?” observes Mick Jagger just before the Stones kick into “Honky TonkWoman” like a mighty locomotive hauling the country-blues tradition into the future that was rapidly unfolding in November of 1969, when they recorded (most all of) this live album at Madison Square Garden. Hell yeah he’s good. As were Mick, Keith, Bill and the newly installed other Mick (Taylor) plus original Stone turned minder/musical conscience Ian Stewart on keys here, there and about.
Sailing on the peak of their powers as a recording act in the potent wake of “Beggars Banquet” and with “Let It Bleed” in the chute to arrive the next month, onstage the Stones played it down ‘n’ dirty, a tad raw and a wee bit loose-limbed and slushy, but to effect that sounds in some ways today even more compelling than when this smoker of a disc first came out. It was the signal that they were indeed The World’s Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Band on any given night they played in this era and well into the next decade, nailing down with casually assured aplomb what the notion means. And on “Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out”, in the pre-professional era of rock concerts, sans any stage set (much less giant inflatable penises), they were there not to simply perform but really play.
Like a genuine band they’re locked in with one another – the Richards/Taylor six-string dynamo trading rhythm and lead like ambidextrous Siamese twins – and roaming together like a pack within the grooves, tunes and spirits of the songs. The moments with the most snap for me (most of the time) may be the two Chuck Berry numbers (“Carol” and “Little Queenie”) and “Live With Me” that deeply plough the eternally irresistible uptempo rock ‘n’ roll groove (in addition to all their other thrills and charms, such as Stewart’s Johnnie Johnson-style boogie-woogie piano counterpoints on “Queenie,” to cite one of many).
January–February 1970 Many, The Rolling Stones, consider this their first official full-length live release, despite the appearance of the US-only “Got Live If You Want It!” in 1966 as a contractual obligation product. The performances captured for this release were recorded on 27th –28th November 1969 at New York City’s MadisonSquare Garden, while “Love in Vain” was recorded in Baltimore, Maryland on 26th November 1969. Overdubbing was undertaken during January and February 1970 in London’s Olympic Studios. No instruments were overdubbed, although on bootlegs, examples are known of Richards trying out different guitar parts (e.g. a guitar solo on “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”). The finished product featured new lead vocals on half the tracks, and added backing vocals by Richards on several others.
Since its September 4th, 1970 release followed “Let It Bleed” (from which four Ya-Ya’s songs came) and the “Through The Past Darkly” hits collection (with hit singles “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “Honky TonkWomen”), some at the time would A/B compare the live and studio versions, which kind of misses the point. And even doing so now, I remain more fond of “Midnight Rambler” and “Love In Vain” here (respectively, the former’s tempo and groove and the latter’s crackle feeling closer to the spirit of its writer Robert Johnson). The studio majesty of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and its stripped-down live verve on this set is to me simply the flip-side of the same precious coin. But again, this was before many concerts tried to deliver replications of studio recordings; the Stones were instead about ass-kicking those songs live as a kick-ass band.
One reason for releasing a live album was to counter the release of the Live’r Than You’ll Ever Be bootleg recording of an Oakland (9th November 1969) performance on the same tour, a recording which was even reviewed in Rolling Stone magazine.
Ya-Ya’s never fails to not just satisfy but renew my love for real rock ‘n’ roll. And I still continue to hear it almost anew and finally key into yet another of the disc’s abundance of way cool moments and touches of a live rock band at their very best and realest. Decades later, it remains my all-time most-beloved concert album, and none of the live Stones albums to follow even comes close. “Live’r Than You’ll Ever Be”.
The bootleg Stones album, made up of performances from the second show at the Oakland Coliseum.
00:00 Intro
00:51 Jumping Jack Flash
04:48 Carol
08:30 Sympathy For The Devil
14:53 Stray Cat Blues
19:10 Prodigal Son
23:03 You Gotta Move
26:13 Love In Vain
31:37 I’m Free
37:01 Under My Thumb
40:24 Midnight Rambler
48:05 Live With Me
51:22 Gimme Shelter
55:59 Little Queenie
1:00:12 Satisfaction
1:06:13 Honky Tonk Women
1:10:11 Street Fighting Man
These nine songs from the iconic, guitar-charring 1967 show have appeared in many editions, first as the incomplete Historic Performances Recorded at the Monterey International Pop Festival, a wonderfully strange split album which contained about half of the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s set and all of Otis Redding’s. The complete 1986 edition marked the first full performance, wherein Hendrix updates the blues “Killing Floor”, shouts out his hero Bob Dylan (“Like a Rolling Stone”), turns one garage rock standard into electric mourning “Hey Joe” and soaks another one in feedback before soaking it in lighter fluid and creating the most important free noise coda ever caught on tape
Monterey Festival helped launch the careers of many performers, catapulting them from local, or relative obscurity, into the forefront of American and worldwide awareness. Today it’s easy to forget that before Monterey Jimi Hendrix had not had a hit record in America. Neither had The Who managed to get a record into the Billboard Top 20 and only one of their four minor hits had got higher than No.51; nor was Otis Redding very well known among white audiences. Rolling Stone, Brian Jones was there according to one report he was, “In a mind shattering gold lame coat festooned with beads, crystal swastika & lace, looked like a kind of unofficial King of the Festival” Brian Jones was the king of Hippie-chic
Back in 1967 Jimi Hendrix made his US live debut with The Experience at the Monterey Pop Festival. .
Please check out the DVD “ Hendrix Live at Montery “
The DVD has been digitally remastered and mixed in 5.1 Surround Sound by Jimi’s original sound recording engineer, Eddie Kramer. The picture quality is sharp as a razor, almost impeccable. The original analogue recording mixed in 5.1 is raw, punchy, dangerous and exciting.
The film footage is crystal clear, almost three dimensional. There is no no sign of grain. It’s like you are watching a rock’n’roll hologram. Live at Monterey, continues to celebrate the genius that is Jimi Hendrix.
It’s Hendrix at his most exciting; a raw, untamed, sexually explicit and pulsating guitar performance from one of the greatest guitarists known to man.
What really gives this release the ultimate rush, are the extras. The DVD is steeped with several documentaries including the brand new film American Landing.
48 years ago. Live at Monterey is a masterpiece.
The Fat Angel Sings 