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The Greatest Live Rock and Roll Albums Ever

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Rolling Stone has a readers poll on the greatest live rock and roll albums of all time. The article is here. The list is as follows:

1) The Who “Live At Leeds”
2) Allman Brothers “Live at the Filmore East”
3) Peter Frampton “Frampton Comes Alive”
4) Rolling Stones “Get Yer Ya Yas Out”
5) Kiss “Alive”
6) Deep Purple “Made In Japan”
7) Little Feat “Waiting For Columbus”
8) Nirvana “MTV Unplugged in New York”
9) The Band “The Last Waltz”
10) Bob Seger “Live Bullet”

I am kind of shocked, completely shocked, that I agree with most all of the list. It is really good. First off, and this is a positioning quibble, so not that important, but I think the Stones “Get Yer Ya Yas Out” is the greatest live rock and roll album ever, not the fourth best.

I would not have Frampton Comes Alive on my list. It was unquestionably one of, if not the, best selling and most popular live albums in history; but it was not musically that great of shakes. In its place I would unquestionably put “Full House” by the J. Geils Band (anybody who leaves this off of their list is either nuts or doesn’t know the album).

Secondly, “Alive” by Kiss is actually pretty great in a way. But I would replace it with “Live At The Apollo” by James Brown. Other than that, Rolling Stone’s list is darn good.

Here are five Honorable Mentions that are so good, it is a crime they are not listed:

Jefferson Airplane “Bless Its Pointed Little Head”
Bob Dylan “The Royal Albert Hall Concert”
Lou Reed “Rock and Roll Animal”
Derek And the Dominoes “In Concert”
Thin Lizzy “Live and Dangerous”

Well, those are my thoughts. What are yours? This is a open for any purpose music discussion thread, just with emphasis on live rock.

Honorable Military Whistleblower: Why Daniel Davis Is and Bradley Manning Is Not

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One of the hottest, and most important, stories of the last week has been that broken by Scott Shane in the New York Times, on February 5th, of Army Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis’ stunning report on the unmitigated duplicity and disaster that characterizes the American war in Afghanistan. It painted the story of a man, Davis, committed to his country, to his service and to the truth but internally tortured by the futility and waste he saw in Afghanistan, and the deception of the American public and their Congressional representatives by the Pentagon and White House.

And then, late last month, Colonel Davis, 48, began an unusual one-man campaign of military truth-telling. He wrote two reports, one unclassified and the other classified, summarizing his observations on the candor gap with respect to Afghanistan. He briefed four members of Congress and a dozen staff members, spoke with a reporter for The New York Times, sent his reports to the Defense Department’s inspector general — and only then informed his chain of command that he had done so.

Concurrent with Shane’s NYT article, Davis himself published an essay overview of what he knew and saw in the Armed Forces Journal.

The one thing that was not released with either Shane or Davis’ article was the actual Davis report itself, at least the unclassified version thereof. The unclassified Davis report has now been published, in its entire original form, by Michael Hastings in Rolling Stone in The Afghanistan Report the Pentagon Doesn’t Want You to Read.

The report is every bit as detailed, factually supported and damning as the articles by Shane and Davis portrayed. It is a must, but disturbing, read. If the American people care about economic waste and efficacy and morality of their foreign military projection, both the Obama Administration and the Pentagon will be browbeat with the picture and moment of sunlight Daniel Davis has provided. Jim White has penned an excellent discussion of the details of the Davis report.

My instant point here, however, is how Davis conducted himself in bringing his sunlight, and blowing the whistle, on wrongful US governmental and military conduct. Davis appears to have attempted to carefully marshal his evidence, separated the classified from the unclassified, released only unclassified reportage himself and to the press, taken the classified reportage to appropriate members of Congress and the DOD Inspector General, and notified his chain of command. Davis insured that, while the classified information and facts were protected from inappropriate and reckless release, they could not be buried by leveraging his unclassified press publication. In short, Daniel Davis is the epitome of a true military whistleblower, both in fact, and Read more →