Phish had a Halloween tradition of playing full albums including Exile On Main Street, Quadrophenia, The White Album and Ziggy Stardust.
I find it impressive that bands like Dream Theater and Phish have the ranges to play such different albums in such different styles. i don’t know much original stuff from these two bands, but it cannot be easy to pull that off.
Too late to edit: another band I like and sometimes does this are the Flaming Lips. They released a full album cover of “Dark Side Of The Moon”, and I’m sure they took it to stage, and I’m quite sure they did the same treatment with another classic album I don’t remember at the moment.
Stretching the concept a bit, I’ve attended a few concerts that were recorded and later became album releases: Peter Frampton at Winterland (Frampton Comes Alive) The Moody Blues at the Los Angeles Greek (Lovely To See You: Live) and Todd Rundgren & Utopia in San Franciso (Live at the Old Waldorf)
Last night at the Kia Forum in LA (fantastic show, btw!) Rush performed the entire “Moving Pictures” album.
That’s awesome!
I’ve seen Ian Anderson and his solo band do all of (Jethro Tull’s) Thick as a Brick album, followed by a new Part 2 album in its entirety.
As for someone covering someone’s album, just a few months ago I saw Michael Shannon (yes, the actor) and his band do R.E.M.'s Lifes Rich Pageant (my favorite of theirs). They’re doing an album a year, in order. (The second set is a mix of other R.E.M. songs – some well known, but mostly obscure-to-non-fans songs).
And, has anyone mentioned Phish*? For several years each Halloween, they would cover someone’s entire album. (They also once played their entire album Hoist, live, in 1994, when it was new.)
*blondebear did, I see.
Saw The Who do “Tommy” the summer of 1970, after a set that was essentially “The Who Live at Leeds.” Pretty remarkable!
Saw Steve Earle perform the album “Copperhead Road” in its entirety in 2018to celebrate the 30th anniversary of its release. That was pretty damned good, too!
I was excited when Yes first did it, but they are almost completely ignoring their newer albums as a result
I honestly suspect that they know their audience, and that most of their fans would rather hear the old stuff than much from the six* albums which they’ve released since Jon Anderson left the group in 2008 (four of which have also been since Chris Squire passed away). They likely know that they can reliably draw a good audience (and, thus, make money touring) by focusing on the 1970s music.
*- Even as a lifelong Yes fan, I haven’t been paying much attention to their recent music, and I had no idea that they’ve now released that much after the rift with Anderson (including one which was apparently just released yesterday).
A bluegrass band called the Hillbenders did a full album cover of “Tommy” about ten years ago or so, with all-acoustic instrumentation, and billed it as a “bluegrass opry”.
Here’s the overture, to give you a taste;
What? You lie. (checks Internet) oh, gosh, sorry about that, indeed they did.
I still have a vinyl stack of albums that run up through 90210 or OU812 or whatever that one album is, but haven’t listened to much since. Maybe I’ll give it a try for nostalgia’s sake.
I saw Megadeth do all of Hanger 18 at the Hollywood Palladium like 2010ish. It was fantastic!
And in the mid 90’s after a full set, Slayer came back on for encore played the entirety of Reign in Blood! Epic!
During his great comeback days, and could still sing fairly well, Brian Wilson performed the entire Pet Sounds album live.
Yeah. I bought the first album with Davison and listened to it a few times. I haven’t bothered with anything since.
OTOH, Jon Anderson’s True, which just came out last year, is the best “Yes” album in 25 years!
For some reason, the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, has what would seem the Lion’s Share of concerts recorded there, in comparison to Madison Square Garden like 25 miles away.
It’s something of a bootleg, yet my first concert there, “Black Sabbath and Blue Öyster Cult” in the “Black and Blue” tour of 1980 was recorded on film. That night they played in Blue then Black, and both had elaborate sets so a good amount of time between sets. Esp.BOC, with their “Godzilla” and there was tension between the bands, who alternated who would play first.
The concert ended at 1:10AM. The video contains all the songs from both bands. If there hasn’t been a CD/DVD released it’s due to that contention,
Grateful Dead: Go to Nassau (Recorded May 15 & 16, 1980) - this may not count as a “full concert” and I can’t recall which one I went to, yet not both.
That is mighty impressive indeed - both in terms of having 21 albums in the first place, and in being able to play them all in such a short time.
Yeah, even now when I think about it, I go “Phew!”. A mammoth task that will likely never be repeated by anyone. And they were quality shows, too, according to those who attended.
In the 90’s I saw “The Sundays” in Chicago. They had only put out the one album at that time. They sung exactly that album in concert. Since that was a bit short for the concert they offered to just start singing it again and the audience seemed happy with that so they did. They sang the one album twice in one concert.
I had fun though.
Probably their most popular song:
That’s pretty much what The Firm (Jimmy Page and Paul Rodgers’ band circa 1987) did when I saw them in concert, though they mixed up the order.
Coheed and Cambria did once, but back when they only had like 4 albums. They called their shows “Neverenders”, named after their length and comprehensiveness but also because they have a song called Neverender. Now, they occasionally do a tour for a whole album and call that tour the “[x album] Neverender Tour” after the album they will be playing, but they definitely haven’t done 21 albums through in a row (since they don’t even have that many, but are slowly creeping up on it.)