Happy New Year everyone, and welcome to the 24th (and what we think may be the liveliest-ever) episode of the CROSSED CHANNELS podcast — a.k.a. the podcast in which music journalists/obsessives Dan Epstein (the Yank) and Tony Fletcher (the Brit) clash and connect over music from either side of the pond. And on this episode, we do indeed clash… though we also connect, as well!
We thought we’d change things up a bit this time. Whereas we usually focus on a single band or artist from the UK or USA for each episode, this episode finds us widening the scope to take on the topic of live albums — officially released and otherwise.
From the British Invasion onward, the live album has often served as a reliable place-holder for artists, a way to release a new full-length record (and perhaps fulfill a contractual obligation) without having to come up with any new material or spend endless, expensive hours in the studio. But there were always exceptions, like the first MC5 album — which introduced the high-energy sound of Detroit rock n’ roll to the world — and The Who Live At Leeds, whose bootleg sound, feel and packaging rewrote the format. (Both these acts have already had their own Crossed Channels episodes.)
And for a while there in the 1970s, the live album became a pop cultural fixture in its own right, thanks to artists like KISS, Peter Frampton and Cheap Trick achieving mainstream breakthroughs on the strength of live albums that captured their sound, spirit and energy in ways that their previous studio albums had failed to manage.
And of course, for music obsessives like us, unofficial live recordings — a.k.a. “bootlegs” — have also played a significant role in our musical education and enjoyment, sometimes even more so than their officially-released counterparts.
So for this episode of CROSSED CHANNELS, we dig into a deep discussion of some of our favorite live albums — and not just our “desert island” selections, but the live albums that introduced us to the concept in the first place, concert recordings that enriched our appreciation of certain bands, bootlegs that we religiously listened to during our teens, and live albums we wish we could have been present for the recording of.
We also get into some of the worst live albums ever recorded by some of our favorite artists, all-time favorite concerts we’ve attended, and amazing shows we’ve witnessed that really should have been recorded for posterity. Place your bets now on how many times Tony mentions The Who in this episode, or how long it takes for Dan to bring up The Kinks…
In case you were wondering, this CROSSED CHANNELS episode was partly inspired by Tony’s horror over Dan’s recent admission that he’d much rather stay home and listen to records these days than actually spend an evening out at a concert or club show. Tony, ever the enthusiastic punter, spent New Year’s Eve at a Gogol Bordello concert at Higher Ground in Burlington, Vermont, a brief clip of which you can see below:
Dan, on the other hand, spent NYE on his living room couch, comfortably sipping a whisky and wallowing in the giddy absurdity of MTV’s 3rd Annual New Year’s Eve Rock N’ Roll Ball. But hey, different strokes for different folks, right?
In the end, this discussion revealed enough differences in opinion (and produced enough heated repartée) to make for an extra-fun, extra-long episode — so long, in fact, that we’ve decided to chop it into two parts, the second of which we’ll run here in a few weeks.
As always, this CROSSED CHANNELS episode is only available in full to paid subscribers of Jagged Time Lapse and/or Tony Fletcher, Wordsmith, though a short preview of the episode is available above for all to listen to. To hear this complete episode, along with all of our previous complete CROSSED CHANNELS episodes, just sign up for a paid subscription to one of our Substacks — or, better yet, sign up for both of them!
CROSSED CHANNELS can be heard both here on our Substack pages or via your preferred podcast app: just follow the links and instructions on the right. In addition to the podcast, Jagged Time Lapse and Tony Fletcher, Wordsmith regularly serve up previously unpublished interviews and other exclusive content to our paid subscribers.
To those of you who have already shelled out for paid subscriptions to either or both Substacks, we’d like to express our deepest thanks for continuing to support our work. And if you have a favorite live album that we didn’t get around to talking about in this episode, please feel free to mention it in the Comments section below!
