Live albums that would have been much bigger if released in the year/era they were recorded

Neil Young – Live at Massey Hall 1971 – released 2007
Bad Company – Live in Albuquerque 1976 – released 2006
Cold Chisel – Live Tapes Vol. 2 (1979) – released 2014 (would've been big in Australia for sure)
Bob Dylan – Bootleg Series live albums – my favourite is Vol. 5 (1975) – released 2002

Don’t get me started on Grateful Dead…

Who else?

 

Every live Led Zeppelin album.

 

Grant Green - Matador

 

Disc 2 of the Pyromania special edition, which is basically a live album. SHOULD'VE been released in 1985 or something as a holdover, but for some head-scratching reason was relegated to a special edition second disc 25 years later.

 

Fleetwood Mac - Live in Boston
The Beatles - Live at Hollywood Bowl
James Brown - Love Power Peace 1971

 

Brussels Affair

 

Jethro Tull either of the 1970 shows at Carnegie Hall or Isle of Wight
CSNY 1974
Deep Purple BBC 1970

 

Yep. I've said it before but if How the West Was Won was released a year after it was recorded it would be up there with Live At Leeds and others as the greatest live album of all time. Instead they released it with a whimper decades later.

 

Sly & The Family Stone - Live At The Fillmore East 2LP. Insanely good.

 

The Bowie Ziggy era ones or the Nassau '76.

 

Black Sabbath - Live at Hammersmith Odeon (1981), finally released in 2007. Although the Rhino Handmade version is long out of print, it's available as disc 2 of the 2010 Sanctuary reissue of Mob Rules. Highly recommended.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00382X4X2/73407921

Far superior to Live Evil. To quote Dio re: LE, "We went out and we recorded a live album, then we went into the studio and we recorded it again." (or something like that). I do think Live Evil's cover artwork was way better, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_at_Hammersmith_Odeon

 

Not realy a live album. Recorded at Van Gelder's studio.

 

King Crimson - The Nightwatch

 

You're definitely right about that. AFAIK it sold horribly, in large measure because many casual fans just thought it was the audio-only version of the Led Zeppelin DVD released around the same time.

 

Springsteen - Hammersmith Odeon
Springsteen - Nassau Coliseum '80
Springsteen - The Agora '78

 

Hendrix In The West - Some of the cuts on this were scheduled to be on an earlier Experience live album but the project was cancelled and Smash Hits was released instead.
Brussels Affair - The Rolling Stones

 

Pink Floyd - Live in Wembley 1974

 

Ten Years After - Live At Fillmore East

 

Good point, and the DVD didn't sell well either. And there was no audio-only option on the DVD. One of the first things I did was transfer the audio from the DVD to CD so I could listen in my car.

When the Springsteen London '75 DVD proved to be such a big hit in the Born to Run box set, Columbia quickly issued a stand-alone double cd.

And someone mentioned Springsteen above. I'm glad those releases are finally coming, but yeah, I'd have liked them at the time.

 

I did the same thing - ripped the audio so I could listen on my home stereo. It's weird with Zep - they were marketed quite poorly in the early CD era in the '80s, then marketed quite well in the '90s with the Box Set and all the reissue stuff that followed - then marketed horribly in the early 2000s, and finally marketed well again for the past three years.

 

Doh! I totally read the word "Live" out of the thread title. My bad.

 

The double live cd recently added to the reissue of Judas Priest's Defenders Of The Faith would've been the right release at the right time if it had've come out early 1985. As it is they waited til after Turbo and that live album was ok but certainly not as good by a long shot.

 

I really liked the live cd that came with The Rolling Stones "Some Girls: Live in Texas '78" dvd - released in 2011.

 

released in 2014