Live/Studio Hybrid Albums

There are a few different specimens of the live/studio album. The most straight forward type would be cases where one side is clearly live while the other consists of studio material. Examples would include Traffic's Last Exit, Family's Anyway and The Fall's Seminal Live. Also, the Soft Machine's double album Six would fit here, which may be my favorite of the post-Wyatt albums.

Then we get to some of the more mysterious, murky hybrids: King Crimson's Starless & Bible Black was basically a live album masquerading as a studio album. The first two tracks were completely studio tracks but most of the rest was live with some overdubbing. ("The Mincer" is a particularly unique case of a track that was drawn from one of their live improvisations, but then the vocal part was created later in the studio.) Other examples would include Soft Machine's Third and Grateful Dead's Anthem of the Sun. Frank Zappa was another artist who frequently blurred the line between live and studio cuts on his albums.

I suppose that a final group here would be basically live releases that have been heavily overdubbed in the studio. Apparently, this was true of the Band's The Last Waltz performance, though of course, this release also included some studio tracks as well.

How do you feel about these kinds of hybrids? What are some of your favorites?

 

The two best live/studio hybrids Zappa did.

 

Wheels of Fire by Cream would be the obvious choice for me... not too much of a fan of the live disc, but the studio stuff is particularly sublime...

 

The Kinks "Everybody's In Showbiz" is a favourite!,

 

The album that turned me onto rock and roll would surely qualify...

It has both studio material and live material enhanced by the studio...and everything in between.

All in the most positive of ways......

 

ZZ Top Fandango

 

Miles’ Live Evil, ABB Eat A Peach, and Santana's moonflower

 

Leonard Cohen’s Dear Heather comprises mostly contemporaneous studio originals but ends with a live cover of Tennessee Waltz from twenty odd years before the rest of the material was recorded.

 

The earliest I remember listening to as a kid was Moody Blue by Elvis Presley. I still like that album.

 

Anthem of the Sun, an exquisite abrasive collage of studio and live recordings.

 

Wasn't Wire's It's Beginning To And Back Again some kind of live/studio hybrid?

 

Ummagumma is like two different albums packed together, but technically is a studio/live hybrid.

 

Humble Pie's Eat It comes to mind in terms of the live/studio hybrid, but as @Rne posted above, the Dead's Anthem of the Sun is a nice experimental hybrid for its time. Zappa and early, mid seventies King Crimson are also fine examples of this notion of practice. Eat a Peach is also noted. The Byrds' Untitled(Unissued) in their original and remastered forms are another fine example of the hybrid. Neil Young's Rust Never Sleeps is basically live, though some of the cuts allude to otherwise.

 

JOE JACKSONS-"BIG WORLD"?

 

Miles Davis’ 80s albums ‘Star People’ and ‘Decoy’ both mixed studio and live recordings as well.

 

Pentangle's 'Sweet Child' (1968) - a double LP: one disc studio, the other disc live, and including only one song from their (only) previous LP, the other 11 being wholly new to the band's recorded repertoire (although a few of these had appeared in different forms on previous albums that the members had been involved in).
In terms of the hybrid type, Quintessence's second LP 'Quintessence' (1970) included instrumental excerpts (guitar wig-outs) from two songs performed at St Pancras Town Hall, April 1970. The concert was recorded by Island records, but there had been a mic glitch so it was clever of producer John Barham to represent the live, improvisatory magic of the band by excising a couple of non-vocal sections of songs from the show, give them standalone titles and use them within the otherwise studio album.

 

Mountain - Flowers Of Evil

 

Black Crowes -- Before the Frost... Until the Freeze

moe. -- Wormwood

Phish -- Hoist (the jam on one track was recorded live)

 

Jethro Tull's Living In The Past qualifies as well - a sub category of 'best of with odds & ends and a bit of a live show thrown in'.

 

Shawn Colvin's Cover Girl is a favorite of mine. It flows so well from studio cuts to live cuts. One of those albums I can listen to just about anytime, no matter when I last heard it.

 

I Sing The Body Electric, by Weather Report. One studio side, one live side.
Live/Evil, by Miles Davis. A mixture of live and studio recordings (more live than studio)

Grosso modo, Frank used live material in all the following studio albums:

Uncle Meat (3 live tracks)
Weasels Ripped My Flesh (we can say it's a half live/half studio album, actually)
Burnt Weeny Sandwich ("Holiday In Berlin" guitar solo, excerpts of "The Little House I Used To Live In")
Chunga's Revenge (one live track)
One Size Fits All ("Inca Roads" basic tracks and guitar solo, "Florentine Pogen" basic tracks)
Bongo Fury (half live/half studio album)
Zoot Allures ("Black Napkins" and guitar solo on "Friendly Little Finger")
Sheik Yerbouti (most of basic tracks, plus some entirely live intrumentals)
Joe's Garage (live guitar solo tracks over studio recordings)
Shut Up N' Play Yer Guitar (live and studio tracks)
You Are What You Is (guitar solo on "Theme From The 3rd Movement Of Sinister Footwear")
Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch (basic tracks and guitar solos on "Drowning Witch")
The Man From Utopia ("The Dangerous Kitchen" and "The Jazz Discharge Party Hats" basic tracks)
Them Or Us (many basic tracks and guitar solos)
Thing Fish (some basic tracks)
Frank Zappa Meets The Mothers Of Prevention (some basic tracks)
Jazz From Hell (one live track)

As we can see, Frank used lots of live material in his mostly-recorded-in-studio albums

 

It is such a shame that Elvis died in a period of his musical resurgence. those albums released from 1970 onward contain so many good tracks - especially some of the ballads.

the album covers reek of the 70s but the music is timeless.

 

Hall of the Mountain Grill by Hawkwind
This was my teenybopper period music.