Some of the greatest "live" albums of all time were recorded in a studio for the most part.

yep. But its a shame. Live albums should be released as is. No polish, no studio tricks. Some of the best "live" albums are classics because they have those studio fixes. Gotta appeal to the masses. However fans like me would rather hear the real deal. But these classic live albums would not be classics if not for the studio fixes. Live shit's gotta sound like studio shit to sell. Dont agree but its true. I like my live music live. Mistakes, bad harmonies, missed notes and all. But that stuff doesnt sell. Such a shame

It's strange too - even with the fixes, they still sound like shit or get panned. So really, what is the point then? I don't know. Mannish Boy and a lot of Love You Live is just terrible because of that.

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SwayStones
Well ,I will be glad if someone would answer me :Yes or no ,"Live in Japan " was free of overdubs ?


Funny no one talks about the best example of a live overdubbed album :Got Live If You Want It !When I first bought it,I didn't noticed (I was only sixteen..)

My faves -tell me if I am mistaken -

"Train Kept A Rollin'" Aerosmith ( audience shouts )

Sir Zappa ( solo on "Inca Roads "/One Size Fits All) =the same on "You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, Vol. 2"

"Live and Dangerous " Thin Lizzy ( I love it !!!!!)
" Live At Budokan " Cheap Trick.
Europe '72 Grateful Dead

Deep Purple states on the liner notes of MADE IN JAPAN Remastered that there are absolutely no overdubs on the album.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2009-09-18 09:46 by saltoftheearth.

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Gazza
Van Morrison's classic "Its Too Late To Stop Now" is 100% live. He refused to have even a note overdubbed.

There are some minor edits but no overdubs. I do not think that any of his live albums is overdubbed. And he allowed a lot of his concerts to be broadcast, many of them live, where it was not possible to overdub anything. (See the website

[eberhardfritz.de.tl]

and click the Van Morrison link). This makes him one of the greatest live artists ever!

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saltoftheearth

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SwayStones
Well ,I will be glad if someone would answer me :Yes or no ,"Live in Japan " was free of overdubs ?


Funny no one talks about the best example of a live overdubbed album :Got Live If You Want It !When I first bought it,I didn't noticed (I was only sixteen..)

My faves -tell me if I am mistaken -

"Train Kept A Rollin'" Aerosmith ( audience shouts )

Sir Zappa ( solo on "Inca Roads "/One Size Fits All) =the same on "You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, Vol. 2"

"Live and Dangerous " Thin Lizzy ( I love it !!!!!)
" Live At Budokan " Cheap Trick.
Europe '72 Grateful Dead

Deep Pruple states on the liner notes of MADE IN JAPAN Remastered that tehre are absolutely no overdubs on the album.

Thanks.I don't have the vinyl so I don't know whether it was notified or not.



I am a Frenchie ,as Mick affectionately called them in the Old Grey Whistle Test in 1977 .

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DandelionPowderman
<In all reality Ya-Ya's, LYL and Still Life do NOT have that many overdubs.>

Yeah, that was my point. Compared to, for instance Thin Lizzy's "Live and dangerous", they are minimal...

"Live and Dangerous" isn't really a fair yardstick for live albums.

"Exile On Main Street" probably has less overdubs on it than that record!

Any one see the Stones last show on HBO broadcast live from Madison Square Garden in NYC? I thought they sounded great. I got a copy on CD that I listen to all the time. I don't think they could have done much to doctor that live show.

i wish the stones would do what the dead do . sell soundboards from each live show they do .MICK THINK OF HOW MUCH MONEY YOU COULD FILL YOUR POCKETS WITH?

I can see their reasons for the over dubbing but there is little point in debating the point because it is 100% wrong! It totally goes against the spirit and legal definition of a 'live' album. Lets be honest....... they make the albums for financial reasons and as such should be held resposable under Trades Description Act in the UK. And they wonder why we prefer bootlegs. The 'Gimie Shelter' concert is about to be re-released on DVD in a re-mastered version...... does that mean it's been re-recorded? If so I'll stick with my VHS version..... unless that was over dubbed as well.

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pdw
Any one see the Stones last show on HBO broadcast live from Madison Square Garden in NYC? I thought they sounded great. I got a copy on CD that I listen to all the time. I don't think they could have done much to doctor that live show.

One of my favorite latter-day shows. As far as pay-per-view type shows go, I think this one was maybe the best (I am comparing it to Hampton 81, Miami 94, and St Louis 97). The dvd has a couple of fixes I noticed - Keith mucking up a riff on CYHMK and possibly the final chorus of JJFlash, where the song sounded for a moment as if it was coming apart (everybody playing at different tempos). BUt comparing the VHS I have of the original broadcast and the dvd version on Four Flicks, I hear few differences. A solid show!!!

The worst example of terrible mixing/dubbing was Flashpoint.

The Atlantic City and Wembley broadcasts sound infinetly better.

this is a great thread, thanks to all, but esp Liddas, what a line, as follows:

Vocals of performers like Jagger are usually overdubbed. Basically he spends most of the show running up and down the stage, which is great when you actually are there. But if you are not and you listen only to the recording, all the excitement produced by his stage show is lost, and what is left often sounds awful. Try recording your self singing while jogging!


that truly puts things into a personal perspective we can all relate to.

Couple of remarks:

anyone remember Dave Mason Live (not sure of title, from maybe 76 or 77, in there) -- it was billed as "certified live"??? (included that song with the great lines "there ain't no good guy, there ain't no bad guy, there's only you and me and we just disagree"

(and what has become of him anyway?, he was good)

In my personal self-made video recording of O2 first show Aug 21st 07, you can hear AND see a real screw up -- at the end of Rocks Off, I believe, when the band kind of kept playing the song a little too long and Mick comes up to Keith and others near him (I think this included the back up singers) and he is gesturing a bit angrily to end the song. And I was up high right above this top of the lower tier Ronnieside so I got a good shot of all this.

I remember one of our members commented to me that she really liked this as it showed things u don't see on professionally edited and released videos.

A little hazy on this but anyone out there who has a copy may also remember.

Personally, I didn't think it was so bad and so it stretched the song out a little longer than it was supposed to go, but so what?


plexi



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 2009-08-11 07:36 by timbernardis.

It's funny that on the tracks that don't have vocal overdubs Mick sounds just fine. As it is with the shows I've seen and whatever live videos. I don't buy that 'running around' trip. He's singing when he's doing that, it's going into the mic. THAT is what should be printed, not something sung in a studio through a mic on a stand that costs $400.

Performance? Well, if it is what it is then so be it. But do not call it a live album. That's just a sham. It's funny they spend so much time overdubbing guitars and vocals on live recordings. There's no excuse for that. They've recorded so many shows...they can't all be bad performances or recordings of every show. And there are plenty of people involved to be quality controllers...

My favourite live album ever is 'Slade Alive'. Minimal overdubs, warmly atmospheric and recorded over only two nights.

I don't know the whole answer but,I do know that many are not / were not necessary. An example is " If You Can't Rock Me " from 1-18-'03 which is on the Japanese version of Live Licks. That version is heavily overdubbed & butchered but,they could have used other versions of the song from that tour which would not have needed the overdubs. 10-31-'02 and 1-16-'03 versions of " If You Can't Rock Me " are examples of versions that could have been used instead. You could do this for most songs from most live albums. What it comes down to is that they don't want to get that involved with a live album - what to them is a small project.

is a live album still a live album if it's been edited from basically every show on a tour? for example



Absolutely Live is the first live album released by American rock band The Doors in 1970. Many shows were recorded during the 1970 tour to create the "Absolutely Live" album. The Doors producer, and long time collaborator Paul Rothchild painstakingly edited the album from many different shows to create one cohesive concert. For example, the best part of a song from the Detroit show may have been spliced together with another part of the same song from the Boston show, again trying to create "the ultimate concert". It can become very difficult to identify what parts are from what shows. Rothchild has said "I couldn't get complete takes of a lot of songs, so sometimes I'd cut from Detroit to Philadelphia in midsong. There must be 2,000 edits on that album"

PDW - I remember watching the HBO Licks show live and thought, that's hilarious that Keith would screw up in Street Fighting Man. It was in the very front part of the song, just prior to the chorus. I taped it.

When Four Flicks came out it was mysteriously gone - and the shot of him screwing up was also changed. So I'm guessing they flew things in from the previous show, which was essentially a rehearsal for the HBO crew. I would think the Stones wore the same clothes etc...

That's just a guess. I really don't know.

I'd love to see one of those comparison videos or an audio version of it.

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skipstone
PDW - I remember watching the HBO Licks show live and thought, that's hilarious that Keith would screw up in Street Fighting Man. It was in the very front part of the song, just prior to the chorus. I taped it.

When Four Flicks came out it was mysteriously gone - and the shot of him screwing up was also changed. So I'm guessing they flew things in from the previous show, which was essentially a rehearsal for the HBO crew. I would think the Stones wore the same clothes etc...

That's just a guess. I really don't know.

I'd love to see one of those comparison videos or an audio version of it.

Same clothes Jan 16th 2003 at MSG ? Not for Street Fighting Man,I think.




Isn´t it more likely that the footage was edited as well with different angels? No big deal if you
think of the camera armada in use.

I love my vinyl 'Livr Than You'll Ever Be' and do not think overdubbing would improve it.

Like many of us I regret overdubs on live records and I think they don't need these overdubs. I usually prefer some bootlegs versions with no overbud (as Let's spend the night together in the madison square garden in 81 - on you tube - verus still live). So whey do they need otherdubs ?

First of all, I think Mick and Keith are great composers but (as many composers) they are not virtuoses. Moreover, on stage they need to pose and doing their gimmicks and tricks (I love it) so they are less concentrated on their music. They have ups and down but their ups are reaching the outter space. As I say to everybody, a Rolling Stones show can have an average quality (or even bad quality) but can also be excellent and superb. Sometimes you win, sometimes you loose...

Once you accept and understand these points, a few mistake from time to time does not pertub you.

They have great bootleg versions with no mistakes. According to me, you can find wasted songs in bootlegs, but also pure gems... higher quality than any official live recording. Why they cannot use this material without overdubing ?

My first opinion is that they need to touch as many people as possible with their live albums so they tend to eliminate their particularities and they try to look like a standard band. The main reason is that their income comes from tour and they need to attract people. As an example, shine a light live CD does not sound very nice to me.. it looks like a band imitating the famous "Rolling Stones" (Off course I am exagerating). I had loved Bigger Bang tour but Shine a light CD and movie is a disappointment.

By the way, they should sell each of their shows by internet, as The Who does (either a Cd or a Dvd at a regular price). It will be nice for us.

Ah. Well, that video link proves that they indeed did not wear the same clothes. I really had no idea, it was just a guess that maybe they did such a thing.

Glad they didn't air that one though - that performance stinks.