I’ll be rude and answer a question with a question, to use my favourite situation of what can be involved with being rude.
What is it you want out of a live album?
Being rude might be on to something here. I’d say, passion, dynamism, energy, commotion, the roar of the greasepaint – the smell of the crowd. Ideally. Unless the record suddenly has broken all olfactory rules known to the universe and the bebop is more like the aroma of old sock, builder’s tea when the bag has been left to sit for a half an hour and iffy kipper that smells like an abandoned bus shelter.
No ifs and butts (geddit), a live album to be a potential “goer” has to feel as if it’s exploding there in front of you. You can be as delusional as you wish because somehow rather than amble yet again around World of Quid looking for reduced price marked down multipacks of tired socks – your present location possibly – or dreaming of a Gregg’s sausage roll while stuck in traffic on the top deck of the 125 that will get you half way home to Osidge in time for Halloween – you are sat in a jazz club in the middle of the action looking into the eyes of the players and transporting yourself to some sort of Nirvana that has nothing to do with grunge. Or anything remotely pharmaceutical come to think of it. Beats a Bovril at home in the bedsit lit up only by the light of the one-bar, whaddya reckon Brian?
The one I think springs to mind most in this regard is Cory Wong and Joshua Redman’s random Tuesday mini epic recorded at the Blue Note in New York and slipped out quietly recently. It’s also a great way to look forward to Redman’s soon to be unleashed Sonny Rollins homage.
