What is Your Favorite Live Recording?

[MylesBAstor]

For me, there's just something very special about the early live jazz recordings. Perhaps it's the spontaneity and improvisation. Or perhaps it's the equipment. Or perhaps it's both of the above. Whatever, it's heaven at home.

Some special ones for me:

Shelly Manne: Live at the Black Hawk, Vol. 1-4, Contemporary
Hampton Hawes Quartet: All Night Sessions, Vol. 1-3, Contemporary
Bill Evans: Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby, Riverside
Bill Evans: Live at Shelly's Manne-Hole, Riverside

[Johnny Vinyl]

I love LIVE recordings and have a good number of them, so it's not easy to pick one favourite. However, the one recording I continually go back to is Neil Young-Massey Hall 1971.

[Ki Choi]

I am torn between

Sinatra at the Sands

and
Harry Belafonte at Carnegie Hall

I have both on 7.5 ips commercial tapes.

If pressured to pick just one, I'll go with the old blue eyes.

[MylesBAstor]

I love LIVE recordings and have a good number of them, so it's not easy to pick one favourite. However, the one recording I continually go back to is Neil Young-Massey Hall 1971.

Good one! Have you gotten ahold of Live at the Cellar Door? I think that's the best of all the Neil Young issues to date! You want to cry when you listen to this old recording.

[MylesBAstor]

I am torn between

Sinatra at the Sands

and
Harry Belafonte at Carnegie Hall

I have both on 7.5 ips commercial tapes.

If pressured to pick just one, I'll go with the old blue eyes.

That Harry Belafonte is an old standby. Man is that good. Interestingly, the whole Belafonte concert was never issued because three of the songs were introduced by Eleanor Roosevelt and there were licensing problems. Chad had a test pressing with those three songs at one of the shows recently and we'l probably eventually hear the concert in its entirety if Chad has his way! Tell you what. There's three more incredible songs from that concert we've never heard!

[Johnny Vinyl]

Good one! Have you gotten ahold of Live at the Cellar Door? I think that's the best of all the Neil Young issues to date! You want to cry when you listen to this old recording.

Yes I did.....twice! Both were defective pressings, which is the first time that's ever happened to me with a Reprise. Waiting for my local shop to get more.

[MylesBAstor]

Yes I did.....twice! Both were defective pressings, which is the first time that's ever happened to me with a Reprise. Waiting for my local shop to get more.

What was the issue? Was it on side 2?

[Bill Hart]

A few that aren't mentioned as often on audiophile sites:

Joni Mitchell- Miles of Aisles- this was during her Tom Scott era, great band, the side with Love or Money is killer;

Little Feat, Waiting for Columbus- the side with Dixie Chicken smokes;

Billy Joel- Songs in the Attic- this one was new to me- and even if you aren't a fan, the sonics are pretty impressive. (A digital recording, but Phil Ramone at the helm).

Rickie Lee Jones- Girl at Her Volcano, EP- there are Quiex copies, but even the standard vinyl is good sounding; another one that uses digital (although I think some of the tracks may have been recorded in studio in analog). I have about 1/2 dozen copies, and my go to is a Japanese pressing.

I'm sure there's more that I forgot.

Oh, yeah, Hendrix in the West, if only for the long version of Red House. But, you need to get a first UK Polydor- BIG difference in SQ.

[lasercd]

Grobschnitt - Solar Music Live
Emerson Lake & Palmer - Pictures At An Exhibition
Genesis - Seconds Out
King Crimson - The Great Deceiver
Eloy - Live
Gil Evans - Live At The Public Theater (Vol 1 & 2)

[Jeff Ferguson]

Ken, I hear that Eroc & Lupo will be releasing the Rockpalast '78 show on DVD shortly.

[lasercd]

Jeff:

I've had a DVD taken from the video master for many years. Its quite a spectacular performance.

Ken

[mep]

Yes I did.....twice! Both were defective pressings, which is the first time that's ever happened to me with a Reprise. Waiting for my local shop to get more.

Once you get a good copy of Live at the Cellar Door, you will forget all about Live at Massey Hall except for the Canadian angle of the Massey Hall recording.

[mep]

As for live jazz recordings and even studio jazz recordings, if there is a genre of music that was consistently recorded to the very high standard of jazz music, do tell. There was and is something magical about jazz recordings from the 1950s in both mono and stereo and both live and studio. Great musicians, great recording engineers, tube microphones, tube preamps, and tube tape decks = great recordings. Those 1950 recordings make lots of modern digital recordings sound like we took a giant step backwards in technology. And truth be told, in many cases we did just that. Anybody love the digital pro tools compression/loudness wars that is currently going on in the digital world with manufactured talent singing through pitch boxes/effect boxes because they really couldn't sing on key in the shower when no one could hear them?

[MylesBAstor]

As for live jazz recordings and even studio jazz recordings, if there is a genre of music that was consistently recorded to the very high standard of jazz music, do tell. There was and is something magical about jazz recordings from the 1950s in both mono and stereo and both live and studio. Great musicians, great recording engineers, tube microphones, tube preamps, and tube tape decks = great recordings. Those 1950 recordings make lots of modern digital recordings sound like we took a giant step backwards in technology. And truth be told, in many cases we did just that. Anybody love the digital pro tools compression/loudness wars that is currently going on in the digital world with manufactured talent singing through pitch boxes/effect boxes because they really couldn't sing on key in the shower when no one could hear them?

I'd also add two-track, maybe three at most. There's a transparency to two track recordings that escapes everything else. A purity. An aliveness. A glimpse of reality!

[Jeff Ferguson]

I've been enjoying this one lately...

[MylesBAstor]

I've been enjoying this one lately...

Love the table!!!

[Jeff Ferguson]

Thanks Myles!

[Bill Hart]

As for live jazz recordings and even studio jazz recordings, if there is a genre of music that was consistently recorded to the very high standard of jazz music, do tell. There was and is something magical about jazz recordings from the 1950s in both mono and stereo and both live and studio. Great musicians, great recording engineers, tube microphones, tube preamps, and tube tape decks = great recordings. Those 1950 recordings make lots of modern digital recordings sound like we took a giant step backwards in technology. And truth be told, in many cases we did just that. Anybody love the digital pro tools compression/loudness wars that is currently going on in the digital world with manufactured talent singing through pitch boxes/effect boxes because they really couldn't sing on key in the shower when no one could hear them?

It isn't just pitch "correction," the autotune or whatever is being used to purposely create an effect- which is fine if you hear it once in a while, but a steady diet of that stuff? Brutal. And that happens sometimes even if the artists can actually sing. Hopefully, it is a trend that will pass, like those things people used to sing through via a synth- who did that? Peter Frampton? And everybody was doing it for a while.
PS: on the jazz stuff, yeah baby!