It seems to me the idea of something marketed as a “live album” is to document something reasonably close-ish to what you might have heard if you were at a show during the general period when the recording was made. Or at least there’s a pretense that that’s what it’s supposed to be, even if it’s understood that there might be some amount of studio trickery going on so as to present the band in the best possible light.
A studio recording might be regarded as more of a “definitive version” of a song, if you place any significance on an idea like that. Or maybe it’s just a reference if you’re more into the whole live performance thing.
I would suggest that the main difference between studio vs. live performance, as far as a listener is concerned, is that in a studio, the band presumably gets a redo if a take isn’t to their liking for whatever reason. Of course, practical, real-world considerations such as scheduling studio time and financing can limit the number of takes you can do, maybe even to the point of “we only have one shot at this, so make it good.” In theory, though, you have that safety net of knowing you have another shot at it if the first one wasn’t all that great. But a concert audience doesn’t want to hear “We didn’t think that was good enough. We’re gonna do it again.” They’d rather you just take a moment, make sure everyone in the band has their heads straight, and then do the next song better.
Oddly, I was at a concert that was being recorded for a live album by the Flying Burrito Brothers. After they finished one song, they repeated it because the audience had been clapping along but not on the right beat.
To me, the real value of an unadulterated live recording is to discover the tricks those artists used in the studio. Many songs in an untampered Fats Domino live performance must have sounded strangely slow and in a different key. (The recordings were sped up to confuse cover artists). Debbie Harry’s voice sounded a little thin in concert without the overdubs she used on Blondie records until they hired a (male!) keyboard player who could mimic her singing voice.
The YCDTOSA series are actually mostly very heavily edited: he’d splice together different takes for the same song from shows that were months apart. The Helsinki concert is an exception to that.
For “untouched Frank” you may be thinking of are the Beat the Boots series he brought out in the early 90’s on the Foo-Eee label. Those were a collection of the more famous unauthorized bootlegs that he simply released on disc himself as a way of cutting off the bootleggers. And he notably left the audio as-is for those (though honestly, a lot of them still sound pretty good), as well as the original cover art.
I was mainly thinking of overdubs but phrased it poorly. There are no sounds added, but you’re right that in terms of splicing different shows together, they are very heavily edited.
I’d known that Frampton Comes Alive!, one of the classic live/concert albums, contained tracks taken from several different concerts. What I didn’t know until today, upon reading the album’s entry on Wikipedia, is that there are a few tracks in which Frampton had to go back in and re-record something in the studio, due to issues with the recordings of the live performances.
As a kid, I was blown away by Lee Michaels’s self-titled album. It was just him on organ and Bartholomew Smith-Frost on drums.
They just let the tape roll, and other than restarting a song if they screwed up horribly, it was “live”. Or almost. Side one is all one medley (with the obligatory 70s drum solo).
This thread made me think of the liner notes, which said something like “As close to live as you’d want to be without being forewarned”.
Gods, I hate Lee Michaels. “Do You Know What I Mean?” is an affront to all that is holy, and 60s radio played it constantly. To his credit, his shrimp recipe is amazing. First time I had it I seriously contemplated pulling a knife on my date over the last shrimp in the bowl. It was that good.
One of the nicer features of living in a streaming environment is that any number of artists are releasing soundboard recordings of concerts, which is almost pure profit for them. Doesn’t get any liver than that unless you were there.
Gaaaah, I agree, that was annoying. Even if I liked the song, by the hundredth time I heard it I’d hate it.
And poor Lee, he rocked so hard on his Hammond B3, and that’s what gets played on “Classic Rock” stations?
(That could be a separate thread: artists whose weakest work gets played to death on radio/Sirius/Spotify.)
But, have you heard his take on “Stormy Monday”?
First cut in the above link. And, staying on topic, it’s Live In The Studio™.
