It's been a little more than a year since this post first appeared and guess what: summer's still here and summer concert tours are still going strong. That means a new crop of live albums is a-brewin' - and what better Friday Flashback to set up our next Hear Factor collection, Live, Scratchy Vinyl (coming Saturday, 8/15/09). Without further ado, let's send Mad Props in the direction of Townsman Mwall, and let's get it on!

This post initially appeared 8/3/08.

It’s late summer now. I don’t know about you, but sitting outside on a summer night, for me not much is better than pointing the speakers out the window and playing some long live double album that during the regular year I’d have no time or patience for.

The '70s were the best decade for live rock albums, and certainly the best decade for live rock albums you’d want to play outside on summer nights. It was the Era of the Live Album. There are lots of reasons why.

Follow up:

Let’s face it: as legendary and notorious as shows like Woodstock and Altamont are, they also show that the '60s was not quite ready for live outdoor rock. People got too intense, couldn’t control themselves, thought the world was ending or changing, shit like that. Of course while it did change, it didn’t change in the way anybody at a '60s outdoor rock show wanted. No, the '60s outdoor rock show flounders on its own self-importance. Sitting in the mud fer chrissakes. Who really thinks that’s fun even if you believe it’s going to change the world? You’d have to be on drugs or something.

The 80s, of course, reacted against the idea of the '70s summer rock show and the double live album. The 80s rock show wants to be indoors and captured on a single disc. It may even add some (now dated) technology just to prove that it’s happening indoors. The '80s live rock audience is uptight, either too angry or too professional or both, “fuck the outdoors” written all over their pale faces as they crash around for a few short minutes and go home ready to be uptight again the next day. And while it’s arguable that the late '90s returned to the idea of the outdoor rock show with Lollapalooza and so on, did it really do so well on the issue of the live rock album? Are there any classic live rock CDs of the '90s? A few maybe, but they don’t hold a candle to the original classics of the genre. As for the oughts, what do I know? Show me the money and maybe I’ll change my mind.

The '70s live album has its own definite aesthetic. It has to be a double album or it’s not really a live album at all. The '70s live album needs time to get where it’s going. It has to be a little loose and a lot expansive. You’re hearing it outside, under the stars, drinking whatever crappy beer you drank in the '70s and taking whatever else you were taking and, if you’re lucky, groping someone under loose summer clothes. It doesn’t make sense to pay attention to the album too constantly. No hands in pockets, “hmm, great bass parts” need apply. The music has to rock hard sometimes, in an earthy way, but at moments it also has to float away transcendently. It has to embrace the grandness. You’re not here simply to listen, but to be. Oddly enough, the great '70s summer live rock album doesn’t automatically have to have been made outside or in the summer. It just needs to feel like it’s outside in the summer.

I don’t think it’s accidental that some of the best examples of the '70s live album are by southern bands, or that the Allmans, working on the cusp of the '60s and '70s, defined the genre’s possibilities. The south knows that it’s possible to kick back and rock out simultaneously. Little Feat’s Waiting for Columbus-–I know “they’re an L.A. band,” but L.A. knows about summer live--is loose and rambling in just the right southern way for the occasion. By reputation the album is not the group “at their best,” but who really cares about that on a summer night?

There are some bands and albums that surprisingly don’t quite make the cut in this aesthetic. Get Your Ya-Ya’s Out is a little '70s but not '70s enough, and later '70s Stones official live releases are dreck. Maybe the 1978 Stones bootleg Handsome Girls, recorded partly at summer shows in Texas, does make the cut though. Then there are bands that surprisingly do make the cut. Who ever would have thought that The Band would participate in making two of the great albums of this kind, indoors or not, Before The Flood and The Last Waltz? The Band knew that in the '70s, the people needed to breathe, not just to listen. Van Morrison’s It’s Too Late To Stop Now knows all about what makes a great '70s summer live album. And interestingly, while Zeppelin botched it with their live album actually released in the '70s, the 2003 release The Way The West Was Won gives you three CDs of summer live, and it’s from L.A. in late June '72. I think the people understood.

I also don’t think it’s accidental that some music that I would never otherwise listen to take on a kind of emotional power at this time of year. Frampton Comes Alive!: a record that only becomes acceptable in the summer '70s rock aesthetic. Listen to that album indoors or in the winter and you’re a loser. Similarly, while I myself never actually ever play any Grateful Dead, even in the summer, it’s in the context of the '70s summer live feeling that I can get closest to what the Dead were all about. Given the right, uh, attitude adjustments, I think I could have had fun at some of those shows. It’s not all about the music, maaaan. It’s about how the music helps you open up in the open air for at least a few moments in your stuck-in-little-rooms-indoors life.

So go ahead, mock these albums for their lack of precision. Say they would be better if they featured 10-12 songs and a total length of 36 minutes. But don’t expect me to listen. I’m going outside, where the world is, and for a few hours let the sound wash over me. Don’t bogart the music, friends.