LIVE

Total honesty? I used to hate live albums. The excessive clapping at the end of every song, the awkward cuts when the CD is on shuffle… but as my love of music has matured and transcended surface charm, delving into the actual craft of it — all the miniscule interworkings that create what is barely less than magic — I’ve come to realize that live albums have something to offer that studio albums don’t: raw energy. An a-live-ness, if you will, that must come from interacting with the audience and having a freedom unique to being outside the studio’s walls. This playlist, then, is a selection of songs from the albums I’ve collected since my live-album epiphany, which I think particularily exemplify the spirit of the live album. Case-in-point: this recording of Jimi Hendrix doing “Wild Thing” is not only totally psychadelic, it is the very recording from the ’67 Montery Pop Festival which ends in him setting fire to his guitar right on stage. And this particular cut of “Another One Bites the Dust” from Queens 1981 concert was called “deliberately theatrical and often majetic.” With each of these songs, though most of us didn’t have the incredible fortune to have seen them in real-time, we can still hear the virtuousic artistry in action. And just to make your day better. Here’s a pic of Angus Young doing the duck-walk. Cheers!

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