Oh, yeah. The Tubes. Like Meat Loaf, it was 100% the show.
Two bands that were great in small clubs were They Might Be Giants and Squirrel Nut Zippers. TMBG especially sound SO much better live than recorded.
Oh yeah, TMBG is/was amazing. I’ve seen them before and after they acquired a band, great show each time.
Tower Of Power. Their studio albums are fine, but live is where it’s at. Even their live albums are the better ones.
Slightly off topic:
I saw them live in 1965 and can’t say I preferred it to their studio albums, but the “Rooftop” performance showed how very good The Beatles could be when playing live to a non-hysterical audience.
I can’t help wondering what would have been different if the Beatles hadn’t given up playing live.
Are there any good examples of the other way around: bands that are significantly better in the studio than they are live (at least when they’re in their prime, and not impaired in some way)? Maybe the Beatles, but as per TreacherousCretin’s post, they were/would have been a pretty good live band given the chance.
Thank you for the Leftover Salmon tip. I’ve never heard of them, and they are positively AMAZING, especially live. I recommend the “25” album, with the great covers of Dylan, John Hartford, and The Band.
There was a Canadian folk/irish rock band called Great Big Sea who was just stellar live. They had a number of perfectly good studio albums that I enjoyed, but the energy and sound they brought live was on another level.
It’s thread drift, but I have several friends who saw The Cars play live during their heyday, and said that their concert performances were listless and underwhelming. (I’ve also read that that was an intentional choice on the part of the band, who may not have liked touring.)
KISS is the quintessential answer here. It’s all about the show. I started a thread on it a few days ago, and in three + hours I’m seeing them live - for the fifth time!
There will be explosions, fire-breathing, blood-spitting, zip-lining, etc.
The Doors were apparently a very good band live, in the early days, before Morrison imploded. They were very comfortable with improvisation.
Becker and Fagan of Steely Dan disliked touring and I’ve been told it frequently showed on stage. But then it was surely hard to reproduce the kind of studio perfectionism they were known for.
I think that works for a number of bands. I often prefer sloppy live performances to pristine studio works, but there are certainly exceptions. I’ve listened to probably a dozen or so bootleg REM shows, like most of them in general and frequently prefer the better live versions to the studio. But certain tracks just don’t work well live IMHO, with It’s the End of the World off Document being exhibit a. Still haven’t found a live version that doesn’t come off sounding a little awkward.
Well, the first band that comes to mind for me is Led Zeppelin. Their studio albums were very good, and generally with pristine production. But I can’t think of any live performances of theirs where they were performing songs after the first record where I thought they even compared to the studio recording. There are a ton of extra guitar parts on the studio recordings that couldn’t begin to be replicated live without a gang of extra guitarists, and they aren’t there.
They were a good band live, but much better in the studio, where Jimmy and JPJ already had a lot of experience before the band.