Five Live Albums/Bootlegs to Get You Through Social Distancing

One of the many side effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic has been the mass cancellation of live music acts. As someone who spends a large chunk of my disposable income on concerts, this means a hiatus from my favorite pastime and the life-blood of the music industry. While this a necessary sacrifice in the face of crisis, it’s a reality that is quite unfortunate for both artists and fans. Many artists are trying to remedy this shortage with live-streamed video performances, radio broadcasts, and Minecraft concerts. (I still don’t understand this one) However, nothing can replace the pure energy and ground-shaking bliss of live music. While this list is also not an adequate replacement for a true concert experience, I thought I would put together a list of some of my favorite recordings of live performances to help curb that hunger until the world returns to a place that’s safe enough for us to see our favorite acts again.

808s and Heartbreak - Live at the Hollywood Bowl (2015) - Kanye West

In terms of theme and style, 808s and Heartbreak is my favorite Kanye West album. While its flaws are obvious, and it isn’t even close to being his most consistent record, I’ve always held a special place in my heart for Kanye’s take on the melodramatic synthpop of the 1980s. And while it may never receive the critical acclaim or classic status of albums like The College Dropout or My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, I think history will remember it as the record that almost single-handedly shaped the sound of pop rap in the 2010s.

In 2015, to celebrate what was his most polarizing record, Kanye organized two live shows at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, California. These shows bring the music of 808s to new heights with the use of a full orchestra, an ensemble of vocalists, and plenty of dancers, essentially turning what was previously his most minimal record into one of his most grand works. While turning the album’s high points up to 11, Kanye also fixes most of my problems with the initial record, reducing the role of mediocre features like Jeezy and Lil Wayne’s. While these features are shortened, the great ones are given even more of a spotlight, as Kid Cudi helps out with vocals on quite a few songs.

If you’re a Kanye fan, you’re absolutely missing out if you haven’t heard this. It honestly might be my favorite project of his, even though it was never given an official release. You can find bootlegs on Reddit, and a video of the performance on YouTube.

Welcome to the Blackout (Live London '78) - David Bowie

After David Bowie’s death in 2016, Parlaphone took it upon themselves to reissue almost EVERYTHING the man had done. This is pretty standard practice, especially for a rock star with a catalog as grand and diverse as his. They would reissue records in waves of boxsets, coinciding with each major era in his career. Alongside these, they also released live albums from the corresponding era on vinyl for Record Store Day. On Record Store Day in 2018, I had the pleasure of blindly picking this up, it was Bowie in 1978, arguably the peak of his career, it had to be good.

I love Berlin-era Bowie, I love David Bowie in general, but that era, in particular, has always resonated with me, The jerky rhythms of his rock songs and the surreal bliss of ambient pieces during that time always wowed me. The first half of the show mostly consists of songs from Low and “Heroes” with a few hits slipped in between. The second half of the show kicks off with a six-song run of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. The show ends with a few songs from Station to Station, a cover of The Doors’ Alabama Song, and finally Rebel Rebel. In my opinion, you couldn’t ask for a better setlist, unless somehow Bowie managed to tour after releasing Blackstar.

In the Music Box (2018) - Animal Collective with Helen Gillet and Aurora Nealand

I am a MASSIVE Animal Collective fan. Truth be told, despite writing this list, I do not listen to THAT many live albums. But if there is a band that’s live material I’m quite familiar with, it’s them. I’ve seen them live three times, (five if you count solo shows) and all of this was after the Painting With tour had already ended. The first of those times was at this show, a special two-night outing at the experimental music venue in New Orleans, Music Box Village. The material for these shows were all original, a return to their more ambient, experimental folk roots with a slight jazz influence. These songs are slower, atmospheric, and strange, especially compared to the kind of music they’ve been making over the past decade. This show has built up quite a reputation in the Animal Collective fanbase, as there are no signs that these songs will ever get a proper release, with the exception of a few songs that got completely reworked for their tour in late 2019 (and will probably make it onto their next studio album).

It was a magical night for me, and easily one of the most memorable shows of my life. I had traveled with my family and a friend to get to the show in New Orleans, and I got to witness a moment in the history of what would become my favorite band. They performed alongside Helen Gillet and Aurora Nealand, artists in New Orleans’s own experimental music scene. There are some bootlegs on Reddit and YouTube that include their opening songs as well as their performance with Animal Collective. One of the most popular bootlegs, uploaded to YouTube in 4K, was filmed by someone sitting right behind me. You can hear me and my friend Carter talking up a storm while we wait for Animal Collective to come on stage at the beginning of the recording. It’s quite funny, as the recording is from two years ago and I’m an even bigger fan of the band now. If you’re an Animal Collective fan, you have to check this one out. It’s a nice balance of experimentation and fun like they always deliver. And it will be neat to see what sort of role this show will play in the creation of their next album.

Minimum-Maximum (2005) - Kraftwerk

To be completely honest, I’m not super familiar with Kraftwerk’s catalog. I have always had massive respect for their influence, and I used to listen to The Man-Machine a lot when I was younger but I never really got into the band. A few days ago, when it was announced that their founder Florian Schneider had died, I went and looked through some of their music, and found that this live album, in particular, was pretty highly respected. It was recorded a little bit before Florian felt the band, and all the performances on it are incredibly tight, as the band was known to be perfectionists. I loved the listen I gave it, and it contains a lot of highlights from across the more electronic portions of their discography. It’s clear that the crowd is having a great time across the whole two-hour performance. The songs on here that I was already familiar with seem to be even more danceable and full-sounding. My favorite song of theirs, Die Roboter, is even better on this record with more danceable grooves. If you’re like me and want to get more into this influential electronic group, this seems like a great place to start, it definitely gave me a heightened desire to explore their discography while listening. Rest in peace, Florian, music would not be the same without you.

Swans Are Dead (1995 & 1997) - Swans

Released quickly after Michael Gira (temporarily) put a rest to Swans, a project so grand and mystical that it pushed rock music to its absolute ground shaking limits, Swans Are Dead captures two legendary performances from the band. One of these performances takes place right before, and one right after, the release of Soundtracks for the Blind. Swans Are Dead contains pretty much all the massive heavy hitters from Soundtracks, like Helpless Child and The Sound. The band also completely reimagines older songs. My favorite examples of this are I Crawled, which is absolutely menacing here and Blood Promise, which has been stretched into a Soundtracks-style 15-minute epic. A few deeper cuts are here too, Swans performs some songs from both Michael and Jarboe’s solo records, and all of these songs are revived here right before the “death” of the band. This was initially supposed to be Swans’ final release, hence the name, and they perform as if they will never play again.

The first time I heard this record I was blown away by how dark and harrowing the performances on it were. It is one of the few live albums that feels like a definitive release for a band in the same way a studio album would be. If you’re looking for a performance that sounds like it’s about to crush your skull, this is the album on this list for you. But even in the midst of the recording’s destructive tendencies, there is lots of beauty to be found in the droney atmosphere of these performances. For me, sometimes the best way to cope with a hard time is just to experience the catharsis of lonely, heavy, and dark music. So in this moment of darkness we currently all find ourselves in, I wish you happiness.