Blasphemer!
Admittedly some of my favorite performances (The Who, Sly/Family Stone) are more impressive visually than aurally. But I wore the grooves out of that album.
My "obvious"choices: Led Zeppelin. How the West was Won and The Who Live at Leeds. On the obscure side I submit H.P. Lovecraft Live May 11, 1968. This surfaced in the early Nineties. The sound quality is exceptional and the performance is full tilt. These guys opened for Pink Floyd during their first performances in the SF Bay area and I feel they may have influenced PF’s post-Barrett work.
Ditto, also Live Evil by Miles Davis.
I’m also fond of MTV Unplugged by Alice in Chains.
I remember seeing Pearl Jam doing an MTV Unplugged in the early 90s and it was stunningly good. But I’ve never seen it again - anyone else remember it?
Really? Hey, there are live albums from bands I didn’t even know had made them! Lots of ‘homework’ ahead…
I’ll never forget getting in my friend’s sports car and he popped in an 8-track (hey, music that wasn’t AM radio in a car, cool!). Now he and I were prog-rock fans, and I expected something Yes/Rush-ish. Instead it started with a staccato beat on a cowbell, and then… Hammond organ? No, some kind of virtuoso slide guitar.
And then came… energy. The band’s and the audience’s… here’s that opening: “I Guess You Made It”.
From Poco’s DeLIVErin’ album.
Nah. If you want to talk jazz, I’d go to Stan Getz and J.J. Johnson Live at the Opera House, Chicago, 1957. But I have plenty of other suggestions.
Dan Hicks had somewhat of a comeback in the early 2000s. He had a live album around that time called “Alive and Licking” that was pretty darn good. (I’m pretty sure I have a copy of Where’s The Money? somewhere… I need to go dig that up.)
I love both Roxy and Elsewhere and Live at Leeds (especially the extended version that came out on CD). I will also submit Dylan and the Band: Before the Flood. It was out of print when I first heard about it in high school, but a teacher had it and let me record it.
The “comeback” album was “Beatin’ The Heat” and it was VERY good. To those of us who’d been following him since 1970, it wasn’t so much a comeback as it was his finally getting the recognition he’d been deserving for such a long time.
Motörhead No Sleep Till Hammersmith seconded, Talking Heads Stop Making Sense seconded too.
Bob Dylan’s At Budokan was important to me at the end of the 70s/beginning of the 80s, still think it is a respectable Best Of live.
On the more obscure side I love Carolyn Mas Mas Hysteria
It was a strange one as I recall it. All the musical arrangements were so drastically different from the originals, you had to listen for the words to know which song was playing. The Budokan “Maggie’s Farm” sounded more like Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff.”
I don’t think I saw Slade Live mentioned yet. A band much better live than in the studio.
My first Dylan show in New Haven, 1978, was part of that tour and featured that huge band (and chorus). I would not call it…an optimal Dylan experience.
Marshall Tucker Band - Where We All Belong Well, half of it anyway. There was one studio disc and one live. The live one had only four songs but they all (southern) rock. 24 Hours at a Time is, in my opinion, one of the best live jams to come out of that (or any) era.
I’ll second Waiting for Columbus - it was my first thought when I saw the thread.
I’d forgotten, Yessongs, the first album I ever bought, is pretty great.
I would have included Yessongs, but the audio quality isn’t up to par. I do like to play Steve Howe’s “Mood for a Day” on guitar with the variant stylings heard on Yessongs, though.
Oops. I just realized I’d forgotten MC5’s Kick Out The Jams was live. That definitely belongs on my list.
Ted Nugent - Double Live Gonzo (although that was then)