Live/Studio Hybrid Albums

The Beatles Let It Be

 

Steve Hillage - Live Herald.

Three live sides, side 4 new studio songs.

 

Rolling Stones - Out Of Our Heads(US) and December's Children
Heart-Magazine
Simon and Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water
Beatles - Anthology 1-3

 

Grateful Dead Europe '72. Mostly live music with mostly overdubbed vocals. I love it.

 

Sigh ... maybe I’ve already posted this but ... The Two Faces Of Fame/Georgie Fame

Blame it on confinement.

 

I think Zappa is about the only one who did this in a manner that suited me.
Really great albums, and they just work as great studio albums with occasional audience sound.

 

I don't think anyone has mentioned Elvis' That's The Way It Is yet. I saw the mediocre Moody Blue mentioned, but not this 1970 album. The live tracks are first-rate, the studio tracks a bit schmaltzy, but well performed.

 

I understand that it was an engineer problem that caused this to happen.
I just discovered that "8:30" was created on the tour,when we got to see them in Reading ,PA ,October 29th, 1978 and this was a month after the video was done in Offenbach, Germany .

 

Some Factory communications:

• A Certain Ratio: ‘The Graveyard and the Ballroom’ (1980). Side one studio demos recorded at Graveyard Studios, side two recorded live at the Electric Ballroom.
• Joy Division: ‘Still’ (1981). Record one, sides one and two various studios tracks, last track (‘Sister Ray’) recorded live at the Moonlight Club, London. Record two, sides three and four recorded live at the High Hall, Birmingham University.

Japan: ‘Oil On Canvas’ (1983). Live double album with new, studio recorded instrumental tracks bookending the start of side one, the end of side two and the end of side four. Massive amounts of the ‘live’ portions re-recorded in the studio while they were at it.

 

Small Faces - Autumn Stone (1969): two LPs of tracks from throughout their career with one side of live tracks slotted in the middle somewhere but they don't fill up a whole side of the LP. Two tracks were omitted as the studio versions were used elsewhere on the album.
Small Faces - In Memoriam (1969): The German export version was a single LP, the entire concert was presented on side one, and the new 1969 era material on side two. This is a much better package, but less well-known.

The Sweet - Strung Up (1976): one LP of a 1973 concert edited down quite significantly and strangely in mono, and a second LP of their choice tracks so far. It's actually a really good compilation as the second LP shows off their talent rather than just picking all the hits. The 1973 concert has since been released in it's entirety and in stereo on a two-LP set.

Moody Blues - Caught Live + 5 (1977): three sides of a previously unreleased concert from 1969 and a fourth side of outtakes from 1967-69. The concert is great, so are the unreleased studio tracks, but together? No. Even the title is clumsy. They should have either patched two concert recordings together to fill two LPs or edited the concert down to fill one LP, and left the bonus tracks for a separate rarities album, there was enough in the vaults to do this.

I have to say, the live/studio hybrid never really works for me, it always smacks of a contractural obligation or a sales tool to sell more records. Or even worse, the artist didn't have enough material for a full album. They should let live albums stand up on their own.

 

ZZ Top: Fandango

in my opinion, it should’ve been a double...3 sides live, one side studio

Genesis: Three Sides Live (US version)

Marshall Tucker: Where We All Belong

 

David Bromberg: How Late'll You Play To
Friday Night In San Francisco, according to Di Meola an expanded re-issue is forthcoming.

 

Maybe It's Live by Robert Palmer

 

Earth, Wind & Fire-Gratitude

 

The Pirates- Out Of Their Skulls

1 side studio/1 side live

 

My favorite live/studio mix has to be the Grateful Dead’s Anthem of the Sun.

As for overdubbed live and soundcheck recordings, Zappa really was great at that. Sheik Yerbouti has long been one of my favorites. I thought when moe. tried it on Wormwood, they made their best album. I always wanted to hear Phish give it a try, but the closest they’ve come is “Demand” on Hoist and “Piper” on Farmhouse, which have some live sections.

For heavily overdubbed “live” albums, I’m quite partial to It’s Alive by the Ramones, Kiss’ Alive! and the Dead’s Europe ‘72.

 

Goes along with its' spiritual cousin, 2nd Wind, where Todd Rundgren also performed in front of a silenced audience in the same manner, to achieve a "studio album quality" with the energy of performing live.

In Todd's case, he had also performed his previous album, Nearly Human, "live", only in-studio, with no overdubs and no audience.

 

Then there's this backpack full of live and studio recordings:

I think it's my favorite Rare Earth album.

 

And then think about all those Sheffield Lab recordings, direct-to-disk, from the mixing board to the lacquer, the studio artists recording an entire album side in one go, no overdubs, just pausing in-between tracks for a few seconds.

 

Love - Studio/Live

Love - Studio / Live

 

Cream-Goodbye.

 

Savoy Brown seemed to be doing this on nearly every album for awhile there.

 

Lou Reed - Street Hassle

Contains some live recordings with studio overdubs