In response to this thread, how about going in the other direction?
Still Life - The Rolling Stones is one of the worst live albums ever to grace a slab of vinyl. This a prime of example of “if you’re not going to do it right, don’t do it at all”. Like George Lucas and the Star Wars Holiday Special, I’d like to hunt down and gather all copies of this dreck and destroy them.
Live - ABBA. Not so much a single concert than a collection of performances from various sources. Due the complexity of their studio work, it was nearly impossible to recreate the sound live without two dozen musicians.
Live At Wembley - Electric Light Orchestra. Same as above. ELO caught a lot of crap for using prerecorded tracks in this concert. And with good reason. It just doesn’t work.
Got Live if you want it by the Rolling Stones is also terrible. Bad sound and terrible playing by the Stones.
A lot of people dislike, Welcome Back My Friends to the Show that Never Ends by ELP. I like it, but you really need to be a huge ELP fan to enjoy this album.
Nearly every concert recording of The Beatles except the official “Live At The Hollywood Bowl” that isn’t obscured by screaming and/or poor recording quality, is marred by playing and singing that ranges from mediocre to execrable. Particularly their performance in Hamburg, 1966. After a few bars, you wonder “what were these guys thinking???”
The worst live album by a band I like is Depeche Mode’s Songs of Faith and Devotion Live. The renditions are okay, nothing spectacular. It was kind of annoying that they had to take a couple of songs down a key or two so Dave could hit the notes.
However, the worst part of it all is that it’s called Songs of Faith and Devotion Live and goddamnit, that’s exactly what it is. Their Songs of Faith and Devotion album, track-for-track in the exact same order, just live. It was the label’s idea because technically, having the same tracklist allowed it to be counted for the charts with the original album or something like that.
God knows what the hell they were all on that night, but it wasn’t anything that improved their chops. Totally unmusical, from Gracie’s penetrating wail to sloppy instrumentals and piss-poor work at the mix board.
I always thought “Dazed and Confused” was an embarrassing testimony to how much the Led Zep studio albums owed to the miracles of sound engineering and mixing.
“Yessongs” isn’t an altogether awful live album, but considering how damn good Yes usually sounds live, it’s way short of what I’d expect from a live Yes album. Sloppy performances and highly variable sound and/or recording quality.
I’ll nominate The Who’s Who’s Last. Note to bands: when your singer has the flu one night, DON’T use that show to record and put out an album! Especially when the other three guys play so sloppily like they can’t wait to go down the pub. I think the band got back together just so people wouldn’t remember this final disgrace.
Robert. Plant. Sings. Flat. That is all. Check out The Snog Remains The Same if you don’t believe me. At least Jagger had the grace not to even pretend he could sing: I sometimes wonder what Led Zep would have been if they’d actually had a decent vocalist - Gillan or Daltrey, for example.
I heartily disagree. Both “Wah Wah” and “Awaiting on You All” are very good live versions–in fact, I think they’re both better than the studio versions. And Leon Russell’s “Youngblood” is a classic!For my money, I have to go with anything live by the Stones. I am a huge Stones fan; I also believe that, with the possible exception of “Midnight Rambler”, they absolutely suck live.
Four Way Street by Crosby, Still, Nash and Young. The solo bits are okay; after all, how bad can a professional musician playing his own stuff by himself get? But whenever the group is together (if I can use that word in this context), they’re horrible.
I saw them a couple of times in their heydey, and the album does faithfully capture the CSNY concert experience (as a marketer might say). The really were that godawful.
