I don’t mean bands that are “way better” live or that “totally suck” live, but are simply different; significantly different arrangements of the material, different sounds, significantly slower or faster, etc.
I’ll start with the Magnetic Fields; on record, they’re a twee pop band with drum machines and dinky synths making up most of the sounds. Live, they play as a “chamber group,” with acoustic guitar, cello, ukulele, piano, and no drums.
Pretty much all of pop punk. Live makes one have a “oh, so you do play loud” reaction.
More specifically (not pop punk, work with me) Menomena. I’ve been ambivalent to their records, but decided to go to their show anyway. Probably best set I’ve ever seen, in terms of musicianship. Three guys, 6+ instruments. I’m still not sure how they worked it all out.
This works for a ton of bands, but not nearly as much:
Okkervil River
Bright Eyes (he was a top-notch performer)
Dead Meadow
Man Man
David Karsten Daniels
Etc. I’ve excluded all the ones that sound like a reasonable approximation of what you’d expect their live sound to be. All the above were slightly different in some small way.
The Rolling Stones. They tend to play much faster live.
It was SOP in the 60s and 70s for bands to sound different live than in the studio. You expected the bands to play their songs in different ways, with different arrangements, etc. Listen to some of the concerts at Wolfgang’s Vault to hear what bands did in concert and compare it to the studio version.
Pink Floyd, The J. Geils Band (who always were best live), Elvin Bishop, the Allman Brothers, Wet Willie, and most bands I saw back then performed their music differently live – often with more life and excitement.
Albums also reflect this. Listen to something like Elton John’s 11/17/70 to hear a side of Elton you probably don’t recognize.
Groups that tried to replicate the sound of their studio albums were sneered at.
The White Stripes, for sure. (Hubby was slightly disappointed by how their sound translated to the live act, but with a two-piece band, what do you expect?)
You mean they can sound worse!?
I’m not trying to be an ass, but frankly, I would expect them to hire some backing musicians. It was good enough for Prince for years.
Seeing Cat Empire live is a completely different experience from listening to one of their albums. They like to go all out with some of their songs, throwing in 4-5 minutes of crazy improvisations before finally winding their way back to something that sounds like the recorded version.
Recordings of live performances can be found online. Compare to an album track, and you’ll see exactly what I mean… they sound a little bit boring by comparison to the live performance, most of the time.
Sadly, they don’t come out to Canada all that often. I really ought to move to Oz, considering how many of my favourite bands hail from the land down under.
On the flip side, I was most disappointed by another Aussie band, Architecture in Helsinki, because their live show didn’t have the same manic musical chaos as their album… in fact, they pretty much sleepwalked through their entire set. Yawn. That may have had a lot to do with jetlag, though, considering they’d just flown in the day before.
They’re widely known as a band that sounds identical live, and are known for tracking much of their albums live-in-the-studio. Maybe you guys saw them in a huge arena or something?
The Archies—For those of you not familiar with this group, in the mid 1960s, the Archie comic book went television cartoon and one of the television aspects of the cartoon was a cartoon rock n’ roll video each week. One of these Sugar, Sugar went gold (and probably platinium) so they started farming out live groups as The Archies playing across the country. On any given weekend there could be any place betwee four and ten different real Archies bands out and about the country. And trust me, they would be significantly different. Not only from the original music but from each other.
Well, I didn’t get to go, but yes hubby saw them in an arena. We’ve got the Live Under Blackpool Lights DVD that came out a few years ago, and it sounds very different than the studio albums.
I used to like Guns N’ Roses, but then I saw them live, and they sucked worse than the suckiest bunch of suck that ever sucked.
I always enjoy seeing The Dave Matthews Band live. I love their studio stuff, but when they play live all bets are off!
Some of their live versions are off the hook with 5 minute solo’s from the violinist, the saxaphone or drums (or all three!).
Different speeds, tempos, improv. It’s great.
That’s why I keep buying their live albums because even though they have the same songs they sound so different.
MtM
The Roots. Love them on wax, but I am in awe of them live. They do tend to play many songs much faster, or they tend to speed up the music at the end of many of the songs. And they give more time to the band, overall, and less time to Black Thought.
If Stop Making Sense is any indication, Talking Heads were quite different live than on studio albums.
This thread is made for stoner jam-bands. At the top of the list are:
The Grateful Dead
Phish
Dave Matthews Band
DMB is the least of the offenders, but all their performances tend to devolve into a smattering of people banging away at their instruments without any regard for the other members of the band or for songs that they presumably know.
Mike Patton is a product of the studio. Any band with him in it live will have you heading for the exit like you drank from a Tiajuana mud puddle. Can’t carry a tune with a wheelbarrow.