Live staples that were never recorded in the studio

With covers this happens a lot.

see also the Velvet Underground's "Sweet Sister Ray" and "Sweet Rock & Roll", the latter of which is only apocryphal, not even preserved on bootlegs

― sleeve, Friday, 7 December 2018 02:14 (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

After some research over the years, I am of the opinion that these are one and the same.

The Doors - “Celebration of the Lizard”

I thought there was a studio recording of that that was added to an extended remaster of Waiting For the Sun.
THough I guess it was 30 years after the fact.

A fair bit of Frank Zappa -- the most live-staple-y might be "Black Napkins" but lots of albums had live recordings and once a piece was in his book he might make any band thereafter add it to their repertoire. Sheik Yerbouti and (especially) Roxy & Elsewhere have a lot of songs that became staples.

― WmC

yeah he mostly gave up on the studio after about 1974

probably the _most_ live-staple song of his never recorded in the studio was "the illinois enema bandit", which zappa played at basically every fucking concert after he wrote it because he was awful.

https://www.setlist.fm/stats/frank-zappa-3d6b52b.html

"City of Tiny Lites" and "Bobby Brown" has it beat, among songs with no studio version.

Stevie Wonder's "Fingertips" is an odd one - there was a studio recording on his debut album. It was basically a flute instrumental with Stevie Wonder playing the bongos. The later live version had Wonder on harmonica and was a big hit, but as far as I can tell he never recorded a studio version of the live arrangement.

I was going to say "Satan" by Orbital - the original doesn't appear on any of their albums, but it was released on an EP.

Tangerine Dream recorded masses of live-only music, and released some of it, except that (a) a lot of it was formless noodling and (b) they essentially gigged with an entire recording studio sitting around them. Logos, which was used in the soundtrack of Michael Mann's The Keep, was a live recording. Encore, one of their most popular albums, had bits of Stratosfear and Sorcerer but was mostly all-new.

sometimes I idly wonder when we'll have a successful band that doesn't record at all and *only* plays things live (while banning recording equipment from their gigs, of course)

given how worthless recorded music is now

That's like the singer in Diva.

I don't know what that is

Satan was on their first album! Though maybe not in the UK...

the Doctor Who remix was the answer for them, for a few years at least...I still remember fans saying, "hey, you can't release that, it's supposed to be a nice bonus for the people who come to see you!"

xp you should watch it! good stuff.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082269/

ah, right, but that's opera which is kinda different.

I was thinking more like recorded music isn't worth anything cuz it's so widely available, what if you increased the economic value of the live performance by making it the *only* way to experience a band/artist's music? there are some basic problems with this (how would anyone know they want to hear this band, for ex.) but I still kinda wonder about it... like, some big band with a pre-established rep could pull it off. Make every show a rare event, charge shit-ton of money etc.

a modern variant of the "one night only!" hook

I think Cake floated the idea of making their new album "live only" but it takes some balls to do that, even in this environment

Fela used to play new songs live, then abandon them once he'd recorded the studio versions.

unwound did that a bunch early on

"You Were Cool" by the Mountain Goats

Did Neil Young ever record a studio version of My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)? In fact, wasn't Rust Never Sleeps pretty much all at least semi-live?

Oh yeah, Neil Young has probably done this more than any comparable figure in rock music.

yeah, no studio version of "needle & the damage done," a bunch of the Rust stuff (though those may have overdubs), a lot of Harvest Moon ...