The Live Album Project

The Live Album Project started because I bought my wife a record player for Mother’s Day. Though I wasn’t thinking about it at the time, this has proven to be a magnificently useful gift in much the same way as a Pandora bracelet. We can now spend years expanding our record collection one holiday at a time. The gift here isn’t so much the player itself as it is the journey to rediscovering vinyl records.

But do vinyl records sound better?

I suppose there’s some argument that they might. Recording sound via analog methods gives us pure, natural sound waves with no artificial distortion. We all know what these sound like; we hear analog sound every day in the world around us.

Granted, natural distortion remains possible. Think of a room with poor acoustics to get a sense for how natural distortion can affect sound quality. You get these kinds of effects when sound waves bump into each other at unfortunate angles, creating unintended harmonics or distortions. But at least these kinds of distortions aren’t endemic to the recording process itself. 

All other factors aside, analog recording ought to give us a true record of natural sound.

This isn’t exactly true with digital recording. Although the math behind synthesizing sound waves is a good bit more complicated, the process itself is basically similar to the process for inverting DC power to AC. DC power generates a steady pulse, which we then invert 60 times/second x 3 phases to get something like an AC power wave. Instead of true three-phase AC power, we wind up with three square waves 120 degrees out of phase with a frequency of 60 Hz. Which, yeah, is basically pretty close.

The differences between the smooth AC sine wave of the power system and the square inverted sine wave from our DC source show up as harmonics -- yes, just like they would with sounds. In the power system, we kind of “saw off” the rough edges using smoothing reactors and filtering capacitors. The process with sound is a good bit more complicated in that a computer will actually mix a bunch of different waves shapes together to synthesize something that is mathematically indistinguishable from natural sound -- that’s a dizzying piece of math, by the way -- but we’re still never going to get truly perfect digital sound. That’s just not possible. The nature of the process itself implies some minimal level of harmonics and/or distortion must always be present, even if the levels are so small as to be imperceptible to the human ear. Moreover, music is recorded digitally these days, so even if you do buy vinyl, you’re still (usually) buying an analog re-recording of a digital process. You’ll wind up with a true, natural copy of whatever distortions were inherent in the original digital recording process.

Sigh.

The real reason to buy records is that records force us to listen to albums rather than playlists. An album is a long-form artistic statement from a group of musicians. There’s something to that. I mean, yeah, the released singles are usually the best songs on the album, but in terms of understanding what these bands were trying to say, well, there’s really no substitute for experiencing the music the way they intended to present it. There’s a mixture of context and intent there.  That’s a good thing.

Speaking personally, however, I’ve always really enjoyed live albums, and as a statement of where a band is or was at a certain time period, there’s arguably no better experience than via their recorded performances. I mean, studio albums are fine, but what were these guys like as performers? In the 2st Century, this is arguably more important than ever. 

Sure, there are mistakes and distortions in live recordings, but there is also energy and interaction with the crowd. That stuff matters. At least, I think it matters, anyway.

With that in mind, I went to social media yesterday for live album recommendations. I’ve listed the ones that I’ve already listened to as well as new recommendations and their source. I’ll write out some notes on some of these as I start working through the list over the next couple of weeks. You can look for that if you’re interested.

The Live Album Project

Our Story So Far…

Fleetwood Mac - Live

The Police - Certifiable

Journey - Greatest Hits Live

Taylor Swift - Live from Paris

Rush - A Show of Hands

Twitter’s Suggestions

Kiss -- Alive 1 & 2

Rush - Exit Stage Left

Rush - Live in Rio

Prince - Let’s Go Crazy (Live in Syracuse)

Stoney LaRue Keens - Live #2

Red Dirt - Texas Music at Its Finest

Bob Seger - Live Bullet!

Jimi Hendrix - Live at Monterey

Styx - Return to Paradise Live

Bob Marley & the Wailers - Babylon by Bus

Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid (Live at Abbey Road)

Peter Gabriel - Secret World Live

Sting - All This Time

Paul Simon - Live in New York City

Facebook’s Suggestions

The Eagles - Hell Freezes Over

Iron Maiden - Live After Death

Peter Frampton - Frampton Comes Alive

Frank Sinatra - Sinatra at the Sands

Nirvana - MTV Unplugged in New York

Aretha Franklin - Live at the Filmore West

Cheap Trick - At Budokan!

Simon & Garfunkel - The Concert in Central Park

Joe Cocker - Mad Dogs & Englishmen

Elton John - Live from Russia

The Ramones - It’s Alive!

Pantera - Official Live: 101 Proof

The Derek Trucks Band - Live at the Georgia Theater

Oasis - MTV Unplugged

Alice in Chains - MTV Unplugged

LL Cool J - MTV Unplugged

Scorpions - World Wide Live

The Who - Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970

Poison - Swallow This Live

Instagram Suggestions

The Kinks - One for the Road

Offline Suggestions

Eric Clapton - Unplugged

The Allman Brothers Band - Live at Filmore East

The Beatles - Live at the Hollywood Bowl

Pink Floyd - Delicate Sound of Thunder

Personal Favorites

Rush - All the World’s a Stage

Metallica - S&M

Joe Satriani - Time Machine Live

Foreigner - iTunes Live: London Music Festival

Jackson Browne - Running on Empty