The Living Rockumentary

You know, Brian, you're probably right about the VU being the best live thing ever. I'm a closet Skynyrd fan and I get off on some of their live stuff but as cool as I find their live versions of I Ain't The One or Gimme 3 Steps for instance, I'm equally as turned off by the endless Free Bird jam. And yes, part of the appeal for us to those VU shows may well have to do with that 30-person audience we can relate to. Everything is intimate and honest and soulful and the quartet plays so perfectly together with just guitars, bass, drums and great songs. That's what we know. Other high-mark live albums in my book include the James Brown one from the early 60s where he and his band are just on fire (the Apollo, maybe?), the bootleg album The Shit Hits The Fans, which is a document of a live show by The Replacements, where they drunkenly assault classic rock staples from Thin Lizzy, U2, Black Sabbath, Skynyrd, etc. with little lyrical parody lines tossed in (e.g. "Jumpin Jack Flask"). And other bootlegs of theirs that circulate have them covering If I Only Had A Brain from The Wizard Of Oz, slaughtering Dylan's Like A Rolling Stone (Like A Rolling Pin) and shotgun-marrying their own song 'I'm In Trouble" to "Last Train To Clarksville." Some of these recordings take the small VU audience response one step further. Songs break down to almost no applause- what few people there are in the room are either too unimpressed, too drunk or too disinterested to even bother applauding. Nonetheless, I have to say my own personal favorite live album ever is BB King's Live At The Regal. It encapsulates everything that's good about da blooz. To me anyway. Music that's so full of life and soul and spirit- it just transports you to the show itself.