Alan Ratcliffe wrote
I've got no problem with live album tracks being composites from a number of live performances (like Zappa's You Can't do That on Stage Anymore series) - all the parts are live and it says something about the tightness of the band that it's possible to do this at all.
But studio parts to replace live parts has always felt like a bit of a cop out on the band's part - it obviously means they can't pull it off live.
Or that something went wrong with the recording.
In the liner notes for
Waiting for Columbus it is noted that Lowell George liked a "real hot" guitar signal on tape and that the engineer for the live album, who had not worked with the band before, hadn't got down what George liked.
Bad planning more than anything else, I guess.
More easily defended is the re-recording of the guitar parts on the live Sandy Denny album
Gold Dust. They had recorded one show and then the tapes lay around somewhere for years. By the time anybody got around to doing anything with the recordings the track with the lead guitar on it had been seriously damaged. They also lost the backing vocals.
Somebody (can't remember who) once defended the practice of "sweetening" live albums by saying that they didn't want to hear the mistake in the guitar solo for the next 10 years. I can half see the point. But perhaps the thing to do is to accept that "live" is "live". I have two Richard Thompson DVDs that were each recorded from a single live show. On the one Thompson is having quite a lot of tuning problems with his electric guitar (until a string breaks in mid solo. After that the restrung guitar seems to be behaving). In the other there are couple of glitches with backing vocals and with the sax player starting off the show a little sharp and then coming into tune, and Thompson has tuning problems again on one of his showcase tracks "Shoot Out The Lights" (weirdly this is the track on the other DVD where the string breaks). But that IS what happened on the night, and with only one show recorded there were no alternate versions to chose from. You have to give them kudos for not going back and fixing things, but I do understand the point that for the rest of my life I have to hear Thompson's guitar going out of tune.
I suppose this is why you record multiple shows. There are a lot of live Thompson CDs, and usually what happens is that his sound guys record a whole tour and then stitch together an album from the various recordings - but each number is live, unedited, no overdubs etc. In the case of one of the DVDs that I refer to above the show was a one-off TV special, so there were no alternate takes to consider.
That DVD is one of the "Live From Austin, TX" series put out by the TV station KLRU who record shows in their own studios for their "Live From Austin" TV show. The series has been running for years. Releases on DVD are negotiated on an artist-by-artist basis and not everything gets released (Thompson was a free agent when he did his show). There's some terrific stuff on the DVD series including John Hiatt, Eric Johnson, Johnny Cash and Roy Buchanan. All of it absolutely live on the night, one night only. It's reassuring to me that a lot of fine artists are still willing to work on that basis.
