Tenuous segues are far preferable to completely ignoring someone's last post and starting a topic afresh in a manner that suggests the poster was barely able to refrain from starting with, "ANYWAY...". So I applaud the initiative, Mike!

As for the live album, like Derek, I don't I own very many. I prefer the studio or 'finished' product, though I recognize that this may well be a contentious statement. Some might argue that a song isn't ever finished, and that years of performance can add layers of nuance or complexity to a song or strip it down into more basic elements that come across as organic, cleaner, fresher... I'm willing to entertain that argument if directed to some examples but most of the live performances I've experienced in recorded version--watching on television or listening to on a stereo--are usually either pale imitations of the recorded versions (think Mick Jagger singing 'Start Me Up' on stage anytime over the past 25 years) or full of improvisational flourishes (Sting peppring a rendition 'Roxanne' with jazz scat, something I witnessed on television over 20 years ago but still makes me shudder to this day) that irritate more than improve.

Whenever I'm sitting around and listing albums with friends and a live album is mentioned, it is usually pointed out, rather quickly that the album is 'just' a live album, an almost knee-jerk reaction to qualify that suggests, to me, that on some level, we don't believe the live album counts towards an artists' legacy.

It is interesting that most of those albums you list are from the 1970s. I started buying music around the end of that decade and I guess the music I was into in the early to mid 80s didn't translate all that well to live performance (heavy synth, layered guitar, tortured vocals). While this may well be why I don't own as many, I do get the sense, from trolling through different websites, that there's a bit of a consensus that the live album reached its zenith in that decade. Did the 80s kill the live album?

To Derek's point that the relative ease with which we can find and play a seemingly infinite number of live performances may spell the end of the live album for good. But I'm guessing that there will always be completists who will want to own (by which I mean, have in their possession rather than bought) every possible recorded version of a band's output, even if these can be retrieved at any time on a handheld device within seconds. Those of you who seek out torrents can attest to the size and scope of some of the 'complete' collections of a band you may have assumed only released a handful of albums. Not sure if this means record companies will continue to release live albums but then again, there may not be such a thing as a record company in the near future.