26. Live/Dead – Grateful Dead (1970)
A perennial favourite of mine, especially the 23-minute version of “Dark Star”: a great trippy, psychedelic chill-out track. This plus the "live in the studio" versions of “St Stephen” and “The Eleven” along with the live part of Pink Floyd’s, “Ummagumma”, provided my teenage soundtrack. For best effect: play loud and in the dark!
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27. All the World’s A Stage – Rush (1976)
The album that launched Rush in the UK (and the first I heard too!) it's possibly a contender for the first prog-metal album as it contains superb versions of, “By-Tor and The Snow Dog” and “2112”: both of which could be considered the earliest incarnations of prog-metal. The studio album version of the latter then came to prominence with airplay on rock radio programmes. This was the first Rush album I bought and was probably the first one for most fans in the UK too. I still play this awesome version of “By-Tor” regularly. Phil Easton’s early evening rock show on Radio City in the mid 70’s featured tracks regularly -so much so, he created a jingle from a drum break in “By-Tor”. This was considered to be the end of part one of Rush’s career: a sort of greatest hits live comprising hits that no-one had heard!
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28. Live Rust – Neil Young (1979)
A great Neil Young live album: part acoustic and part electric. The album was the soundtrack to a film of the same name featuring twenty foot high speakers and ten foot high microphones on the stage together with an army of “road-eyes” roaming around the stage. Live Rust has NY with the greatest bar-room band, Crazy Horse in concert. The gig builds up from an acoustic set into a full blown rock-out from “Sugar Mountain” to "Powderfinger" and "Cortez The Killer," as well as more wrist slashing numbers like "Tonight's The Night" and "The Needle and the Damage Done". I love it!
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29. Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out – Rolling Stones (1969)
A school friend once learned to play the drums by copying Charlie Watts doing tracks like “Carol” from this classic album, This is the Stones best live album and a strong contender for the best live album of all time featuring exciting versions of their blues-rock period. The outstanding version of “Midnight Rambler” is superior to the studio version.
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30. Yessongs – Yes (1973)
Originally a live triple album (when triple albums seemed to be all the rage!) the band delivers superb, elongated and varied versions of songs from “The Yes Album”, “Fragile” and “Close to the Edge”. Nearly all the tracks are over ten minutes long and the band, with recently recruited Alan White on drums play their complex, dexterous and extended versions of their repertoire. This is a sort of greatest hits played live. Aaah! The sixth form revisited!
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31. Got Blood If You Want It – AC/DC (1978)
Great killer riffs played at a high intensity make this one of the best live “dins” The energy that flows from this album is unreal and powerful. This is a contender for the best “air guitar” album of all time containing most of AC/DC’s earlier hits such as “Whole Lotta Rosie” and “Let There Be Rock”. Music to blow your speakers to (indeed, one of my friends did exactly that after we’d returned from a beery Sunday lunch!)
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32. Live In Europe – Rory Gallagher (1973)
I saw Rory in concert on numerous occasions: he never let me down. This tour I saw him at Liverpool stadium. Great show, great showman. He’s sadly missed. This is a great album of rockin’ blues and great playing. Great versions of "Messin' With The Kid", “Laundromat” and “Bullfrog Blues” top and tail this rocking album. This album epitomises my recollections of great gigs at the Liverpool stadium. (For those not in the know: the stadium was an inter-war, asbestos roofed, dingy, boxing stadium that held about 1,200 -1,500 punters. It was located around the back of Liverpool’s Exchange Station on Moorfields. But the atmosphere with the plaintiff cries of “Wally!” and "Where's Wally!" along with the musty smells of weed and joss-sticks were unforgettable!). I spent most of the seventies wearing a check denim shirt and Wrangler jacket and flares a la Gallagher: similar to the cover of this album!
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33. Recital of the Script – Marillion (2009)
“So here I am once more...” Originally issued as a video then as a DVD (I have both) from a concert in 1983, the CD version was only released in the late 2000’s. A much played favourite, mostly of songs from the “Script” album but an excellent rendition of the classic, “Grendel” steals the show. This shows what a great live band the Fish-led Marillion were.
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34. Foghat Live! – Foghat (1977)
This album rocks! This is kick-ass rock at its best! During the mid to late seventies this band did nothing in the UK but was big in the States. The best way to imagine this would be if you were cruising around a southern Californian town in an open top car with this on your tape/CD player being played at full blast. Unsophisticated rock with superb versions of “Road Fever”, “Fool For The City” but best of all, with an amazing dual guitar introduction is, “I Just Wanna Make Love To You”.
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35. Made In Japan – Deep Purple (1972)
A live greatest hits from the Mark II Purple with extended versions of classics such as, “Highway Star”, “Space Truckin’”, “Child In Time” and the definitive version of “Smoke On The Water”. This powerful classic is possibly Purple’s best album. The band’s playing and singing shows them at the top of their game. The re-mastered and extended CD contains the encores omitted from the vinyl album. This album seemed to be played at all early to mid seventies parties.
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36. Live At The Fillmore East 1970 – Ten Years After (2001)
This set was released in 2001 and it’s TYA’s best live album. It is superbly recorded (for its time) and features the band at its height. The concert contains excellent workings of all their best numbers including superb jams of “I Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes” and the stunning “Help Me”. I had the band’s top ten single, “Love Like A Man”. It had the extended live version of the song from this concert as its b-side but had to be played at 33rpm! At the time, TYA had plenty of critics saying that Alvin Lee’s playing was all style and no substance and he was just concerned with playing fast. This shows the empathy the band had for constructing great bluesy jams. Another one to play loud!
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37. Waiting For Columbus – Little Feat (1978)
A much played favourite of mine, partially as it is a “greatest hits” release and, for many years, I‘d only got the original studio album tracks in TDK cassette format. The re-mastered CD includes additional tracks to give a fuller concert performance. One of the best cult bands of all time (along with Spirit) this shows us all what a great band they were.
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38. Weld – Neil Young (1991)
The best grunge album ever - bar none! This gives the word, “feedback” a good name! I first heard this after loaning it from the library. The borrowed album included “Arc” - a thirty minute set of feedback as a supplementary CD. As I was the first person borrow and therefore to play the CD, I was the first to hear that, because the manufacturer hadn’t cleaned it properly or had left a film of wax on the disc, the track kept going faster and slower making it even more far out!
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39. Stage Struck – Rory Gallagher (1980)
A heavier album than the previous Rory live albums with no acoustic tracks but blistering metal blues rock. I saw him play a similar set to that contained herein and where he brought the house down as headliner on the Friday night at Reading 1980 with this set. “Shadowplay” is outstanding! The extended CD includes a superb version of “Bad Penny”. Play loud!
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40. Some Enchanted Evening – Blue Oyster Cult (1977)
A single vinyl album extended on CD including a DVD of the band. My cynicism tells me that CBS haven’t got the master tapes of On Your Feet anymore so they decided to extend this to include some of the songs that featured on the aforementioned classic Cult live album. The live version of “Reaper” is a classic. As a footnote, the third live Cult album, “ETI live” does feature one of my all-time favourite live recordings: “Veteran of the Psychic Wars” containing possibly my all time favourite guitar solo from Buck Dhrama. The 8:08 minute version of "Veteran" from a Hollywood gig on the 9th October 1981 on You Tube is highly recommended - the solo starts at 3:44! Dark, mean and heavy!
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41. Live – Frank Marino & Mahogany Rush (1974)
I had to include this! The version of “Johnny B Goode” is one of the greatest renditions of a song ever put on vinyl. Marino is a most underrated axe man. This needs to be played loud. One of my school mates, who had got into music only whilst in the sixth form by way of Bowie and Roxy Music and had no metal or prog in his collection, went and purchased this – possibly to test his newly acquired, very expensive, floor standing Monitor Audio speakers!
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42. Kick Out The Jams – MC5 (1969)
A legendary album of proto-punk metal and innocent politics from the year of student unrest: 1968. Infamous for the four-letter words removed from the original UK vinyl pressings and sleeve notes but re-instated on the CD version. Two of my school colleagues had this album: one had the offending sleeve notes removed by their parents the other didn’t! I had most of the introductory “narrative” written on the covers of my fourth and fifth form school books. Yeah! This is the high society! It takes five seconds of decision! Are You Ready To Testify?
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43. Five Live Yardbirds – The Yardbirds (1964)
Featuring, according to John Peel, Eric Clapton’s best solo on “Too Much Monkey Business”. This album was one of the first that introduced me to American blues music. A hot ‘n’ sweaty set with outstanding covers of, “Smokestack Lightnin’”, “Five Long Years”, “I’m A Man”, “Mistreated” and “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl”. I firstly heard a number of these live tracks on a mid-price Yardbirds album in 1970.
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44. One More From the Road – Lynyrd Skynrd (1976)
45. You Can’t Do That On Stage Vol II: The Helsinki concerts – Frank Zappa (1988)
A complete concert performance from what is possibly Zappa’s best band of musicians. I saw this incarnation of Zappa’s band on this particular tour at Liverpool Stadium in 1973.This concert was from 1974. “Inca Roads” may well contain one of Frank’s best guitar solos. This is a superbly performed concert by an ensemble of outstanding musicians.
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46. Pictures at an Exhibition – Emerson, Lake & Palmer (1971)
Another sixth form highlight! This was originally a mid-priced album from ELP who grappled with Mussorsky’s “Pictures” as a springboard to making a great prog album. This is sixth-form heaven and about as far as you could get from the Osmonds and David Cassidy, the teeny-bopper chart toppers of the day!
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47. Quo Live – Status Quo (1977)
In my opinion, this is possibly the last great Status Quo album featuring all their great boogie based songs from their 1977 “Blue for You” tour. I saw them on this tour and can vouch that the Liverpool Empire really rocked to its foundations. A rip snortin’ feel-good gig and a no messin’ boogieeee!
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48. Live At The Fillmore – Derek & The Dominoes (1972)
49. Live Evil – Black Sabbath (1982)
Sabbath’s Indian summer was with Ronnie James Dio as lead singer. This includes tracks from the “Heaven and Hell” album as well as older favourites sung by Dio. The title track of “Heaven & Hell” is a superbly structured metal tour-de-force. This set contains great version of favourites such as “Neon Knights”, “Children Of The Sea” “War Pigs” and ”Iron Man”. A much better album than anyone expected.
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50. Boston Tea Party Vol I- Fleetwood Mac (2003)
This album was planned to be released in the summer of 1970 after the hit “The Green Manalishi” but as Peter Green left the band the album didn’t see the light of day. Instead we all had to wait thirty years before a decent version was issued. There are three volumes of the Boston Tea Party. This re-mastered version is far superior and worth the entrance fee for the 24 minute version of “Rattlesnake Snake” which goes off into a medley of songs from the album, “Then Play On”. On top of this, the 13-minute version of “The Green Manalishi” as an encore is superb. Riveting!”
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