At 3:29 PM -0500 on 3/29/99, Steve Gardner wrote:
>>While I
>>have some sympathy for Steve's POV, I'd like to add that there are fine
>>songs out there that simply sound superior in-studio.
>
>I didn't say every live recording is better than every studio
>recording. Steve Earle's, for instance, is far inferior to everything
>he's done since. I just think that on average, I like live recordings
>better. If I'm gonna buy a CD blind, it's gonna be the live one.
>Another great thing about a live album as a first purchase is that it
>also serves as kind of a best of.
I'm with you, Steve. I've got a lot of live (officially released, of
course) CDs and LPs from groups whose studio releases I'm just not
interested in. In a perfect world, we wouldn't have this ass-backward
situation where people go into studios, and we wouldn't have audiences
expecting musicians to do things they can't do. I'd like to think that
if the Lomaxes' field recordings had outsold Ralph Peer's hotel room
recordings, everything would be recorded live and we'd have real
documents of what musicians and bands were capable of, not what they
wish they were. (Not that I'm so naive that I think officially released
live recordings are virgin, of course. I had to buy Jerry Jeff Walker's
video of his Gruene Hall show because the CD had more studio musicians
than stage musicians.)
Bob
