Recently, a friend of mine and I were discussing live concerts and then inevitably, live albums. We each have our favorites (Allmans, Lou Reed, YaYas, etc.)

But then we got to thinking – what live albums are considered to be the best of all time as per the critics, you know, the lists you find on the Internet. And how would we calculate this?

Well, yours truly knows a challenge when he sees on. So ME went online and found as many ranked lists as he could. If a list wasn’t ranked, it wasn’t of much use to me. This is because my “scientific method” meant that I took the top ten of each list and then gave points for how many times an album was ranked Number 1, Number 2, etc. The results may surprise you.

Note – By and large these are (mostly) rock albums. Only a few lists ranked jazz albums or singers like Sinatra. (That said, the Rolling Stone countdown has a nice mix of jazz and rock). So, the countdown: (And for those who will be inclined to comment and say “I disagree with your choices,” recall they are not MY choices but an aggregaton of various sites. (See end of post).

10 – Get Your YaYas Out – Rolling Stones. Recorded in late ’60, early ’70, this is the Stones at the peak of their Mick Taylor/Keith Richards power. (Brian Jones had died only a few months before). Bassist Bill Wyman to Goldmine: “The Stones were a better live band then any other band at that time…. Me and Charlie were really always on the ball, always straight, always together and had it down. If we had our shit together we got it right.”

There is no meaner verson of one of the greatest songs of all time, “Midnight Rambler” on record. The crowd just starts randomly chanting in the beginning like they’re possessed:

9 – Framptom Comes Alive – You could NOT turn the radio on in 1976 without hearing this fucking album. Not that that was necesarily a bad thing. Lotsa good tunes and Frampton is always on point. Billboard says, ‘With his infectious live energy, guitar God licks, bare-chested/blonde-locks good looks — and, of course, his inventive use of the Talkbox — he gave the songs from his previously released solo albums new life. It remains perhaps the most explosive live album to date.”

8  Live at the Apollo – “Live at the Apollo was recorded on the night of October 24, 1962, at Brown’s own expense.  Live at the Apollo was an amazingly rapid seller. It spent 66 weeks on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart, peaking at #2.” Rolling Stone ranked this #1 and of it said, “The Hardest Working Man in Show Business was in his prime. The longer he tries to restrain himself the more his voice quivers before he eventually caves, shouting and screaming as he begs and pleads.”

7 – Alive! Kiss. I’m not much of a Kiss fan but this album does come up quite a bit. Variety says, “Between Gene Simmons’ bass lines, Paul Stanley’s guitar riffs and Ace Frehley’s high-minded guitar solos — equal doses of Mick Ronson-like glamour and Jimmy Page-esque thunder — this was the stuff of real zeal, making “Alive!” its own zeitgeist moment.”

6 – Live and Dangerous – Thin Lizzy. I’ve always liked Thin Lizzy but somehow this album was not on my radar. A nice discovery as it kicks some serious ass. “Time was tight, so a live album was in order: Live And Dangerous was the snarling result, a document of a band that took no prisoners even on mellower tracks like “Dancing In The Moonlight.”

5  – Live at Budokan – Cheap Trick. Well, of course. Who else could take Fats Domino’s “Ain’t That a Shame” and make it sound like like some cranked-up meth head was singing it outside your window? “Budokan presents the group in its best light: killer pop songs played by a world-class rock band, with Robin Zander’s versatile vocals and Rick Nielsen’s blazing guitar work front and center.” – Variety

4 – MTV Unplugged in New York – Nirvana. This one suprised me. Not that I don’t think Nirvana were a great band – I do. But many of these live albums are total headbangers. In a retrospective review for AllMusic, senior editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine said MTV Unplugged in New York was “fearlessly confessional,” as it found Nirvana and Cobain “on the verge of discovering a new sound and style.”

3 – At Fillmore East – Allman Brothers Band. Long-time readers know that this would be my number one. No head-banging here, just scads of great (if longish) improvisation. This album is the gift that just keeps on giving. The greatest band America ever produced IMHO. In 2004, the album was selected for preservation in the Library of Congress, deemed to be “culturally, historically, or aesthetically important” by the National Recording Registry.

2 – Live at Leeds – The Who. When this album was released, the venerable New York Times referred to it as the greatest live album of all time. And personally I can easily go back and forth between this (for the crunch) and At Fillmore East (for the improv) all day long. I never get tired of it. “They’d become a fearsomely powerful live band, as fluid as they were brutal: four wizards at separate corners of the stage, raising a golden demon together.”

And at number one, drum roll, please

1 – At Folsom Prison – Johnny Cash. This, for me, was the big surprise. Of all the country guys, Cash was far and away my favorite. I know of this album but I never think of it in and amidst all the loud stuff. But it comes up over and over again and, among the lists I consulted, had the most Number Ones.

Wikipedia: Al Aronowitz of Life stated Cash sang the songs like “someone who has grown up believing he is one of the people that these songs are about.” For The Village Voice, Ann Fisher wrote that “every cut is special in its own way” and Richard Goldstein noted the album was “filled with the kind of emotionalism you seldom find in rock.”Fredrick E. Danker of Sing Out! praised At Folsom Prison as “an album structured an aural experience for us.”

Other albums that were mentioned – Kick Out the Jams, MC5; Stop Making Sense, Talking Heads; Live at the Regal, B.B. King; Made in Japan, Deep Purple; Strangers in the Night, UFO; Exit Stage Left, Rush; Live Rust, Neil Young; I Might Be Wrong, Radiohead; Live at the Harlem Square Club, Sam Cooke; The Last Waltz, The Band; Live at the Royal Albert Hall, Bob Dylan; Live at Woodstock, Jimi Hendrix; Before the Flood, Dylan and the Band; If You Want Blood You Got It, AC/DC

List/sites consulted – Far Out Magazine, Rolling Stone, LouderSound, NME, Paste Magazine, Guitar World, Billboard, Variety (for quotes), Udiscover music, Stacker, Long Live Vinyl, Classic Rock