Live albums, eh? Good one.

They seem to me to be an anachronism at this point; almost every major act of the seventies /early eighties released one, and some of these appaling records were even their most popular - the obvious one being Peter Frampton, who never had a hit "non-live" (how about that for a genre) album; but also Fleetwood Mac, Bob Seeger, Dire Straits, the Kinks, The Stones, Led Zeppelin, Steve Miller Band, the Eagles..... yuck, that's some awful fucking music. Mind you, there is the occassional gem - like Sprinsgteen's "Rosalita" which blows away the studio version, and much of the stuff on "Live at Leeds"...."Shaking All Over" for one.

The record companies used to get away with issuing one of these as a third or fourth album to give a band a little more time to write some material...often signalling the beginning of the end. Too much blow and mindless sex I imagine. Ah, the seventies.

Anyway, hopefully these pathetic attempts to capture the live experience are behind us now; though I did note while surfing All Music yesterday that Rainer Maria's latest release is a live album. If Emo Rock goes live....look out. We were damn lucky that the Grungers spared us - can you imagine the Soungarden live at the Hollywood Bowl record?