Alias

Even better than the real thing?

What is the point of a live record? I mean, at the heart of it, why do bands put out live music? I've always worked from the assumption that they were trying to capture a feeling, an atmosphere, an energy that they think is only conveyed by their live show. A certain je ne sais pas that, assumedly, can't be properly accessed through a studio-tinkered release. I mean that's what I think about when people say "live album." I think of KISS Alive and the sheer bombastic stupidity of 70's arena rock brought directly to my CD changer. I think of Pink Floyd's Delicate Sound of Thunder and David Gilmore's desperate attempt to recapture that "giant-pig-of-'69" vibe.

I only mention this because, in the last six months or so, three semi-relevant indie rock bands have released "live" albums, and I'm not quite able to figure out why. Actually, I think I have a really good idea of why each of the three released their respective live discs, but not a one of them involve the idea that I associate with "live." And that kind of annoys the hell out of me.

Let's start with the newest Built to Spill record, imaginatively entitled Live. I like Built to Spill, for what I've heard of them. Granted, I'm not some old-school BtS freak. I don't have any bootlegged copies of their demo tapes lying around, I don't follow them around the country, and I don't do hand-painted posters of them to decorate my bedroom walls. But I like them well enough. Keep It Like a Secret had some serious rawkitude for the penny-paid. If I recall correctly, one of those tracks made my end-of-the-year best-of-1999 compilation, actually. They're poppy and hooky and, well, a pretty good indie rock band. I'm not sure I'd waste my time arguing that they're poorly understood geniuses or anything (as I've heard some others of the IRM do with conviction), but I like the band. So I was glad to hear that they were releasing a live album. I'd heard from many a source that Built to Spill put on a hell of a live show, and given their recorded catalog I see no reason to presume otherwise. I've never gotten around to actually seeing the band live though (their last stop in Atlanta unfortunately coincided with the Drive-by Truckers' CD release party for Pizza Deliverance, and we all have our priorities.) So, the idea of a live album from them really struck me as a good one.

Needless to say, I was underwhelmed. I wasn't disappointed, per se, but just underwhelmed. See, I picked the thing up thinking, "Groovalicious baby! Now I get a peek into this great live band that I've never been able to see, albeit reduced and once removed from immediacy. But still, now I can figure out what the P-Kids listserv mobsters were ranting about!"

What do I get? I get a "hits" compilation where the songs happened to be recorded live. That's not a live album, dammit! That's a collection of songs, recorded in different places, at different times, coincidentally in front of live club audiences. Sure, the songs are pretty keen, if a bit self-indulgent. A 22-minute cover of Cortez the Killer where the band starts their improv noodle session at the 18-minute mark, for example, is a great song played very well, that could have ended about five minutes ago, thank you very much. The version of Car is great and ends well before the "when will this thing be over" shakes commence, Randy Described Eternity is well contained and solidly played, and The Plan is, more or less, a note for note rendition of the album track. But that's not the point. The point is that I wanted a glimpse of something special, of something that can't be adequately conveyed outside of the live venue but that can be hinted at by a snapshot of the band in action, so to speak. And all I got was this lousy indie-rock Frankenstein, four or five different shows lopped off here and there and super-glued back together in an artificial track list. I don't want a track list on my live albums. I want a SET LIST!

Is this making any sense?

Okay, let's move on. Seconds Before the Accident. Archers of Loaf.

There I go again. I see "live Archers of Loaf" and think maybe, perhaps, just possibly, I'll get a full Archers show digitally preserved for the sake of those poor schmucks of the future who will never, ever, not even once, not even if they beg and plead and sacrifice the blood of cloven-hoofed beasts to Baal, ever see the Archers rip through a live set as if the very songs themselves had killed Eric Johnson's parents. I'm just stupid sometimes.

Seconds Before the Accident is best described as one last spit into the wind, and we all know what Lou Reed has taught us about that. The wind, for the sake of this metaphor, shall be known to be Alias records.

Now if you've read my review of Crooked Fingers you're probably aware of the fact that I'm going to cut this disc some slack. I can do that. I'm the reviewer. So take that you ambient-noise swilling fiends. But still, even when I try, I can't recommend this disc to anyone but completists and freakish fans of Chapel Hill noise rock. A few of the songs stand out. The opening track, Dead Red Eyes is a dead-on look at what the band had become by the end of the war. And contrary to nostalgic reviewers everywhere, that's not a bad thing. South Carolina jumps out at you because, well, it was a b-side that you really didn't expect to hear live. Fashion Bleeds, another of the latest batch of songs, sort of serves as microcosm of what the Archers were all about in that it starts out as a big, chaotic mess of noise and feedback and morbidly hacks its way into song-ness by sheer force of will and anger. That was pretty cool to hear. And for the most part the Loaf seem content to cull their material from one or two shows, which gives the disc a little bit of "live" continuity. But it's still edited, re-tracked and re-mastered. And that's not the point.

But we've been over the point already.

There is a moment where Seconds Before the Accident coalesces into what I wanted it to be all along. Late into the set of the Archers' final gig (played in their hometown of Chapel Hill) the band digs deep into their catalog and pulls out You and Me and Might. Back-to-back tracks from the band's first full-length release (Icky Mettle for those of you scoring at home), the two songs have sort of melded into a two-part singularity over the years. As Matt Gentling begins plucking out the bass intro of You and Me you can hear the crowd (distinctly male, by the way) start to yelp out the lyrics-yet-to-be. Eric Bachmann, ever the stage magician, brings his own voice up and into the crowd's mix in a way that intimates that he is just one of those guys that happens to be standing near an open mike. And all things considered, listening to EB croak out "I've been so down lately/You've been so low lately/Nothing seems to work out for you and me" before crashing into the meat of the song, and then immediately launching into "With all of my might/with all of my might I do this/It's a waste of my to pursue this/It's so far self-indulgent to think that you'll like this song…" seems like a pretty sound commencement to the Archers' career as a band.

All things told it's an apropos ending to the Archer's catalog. But it's not going to suddenly swamp new listeners with the band's brilliance. I mean, really, if you're don't already have this album then you probably don't need it. Just listen to Vitus Tinnitus again. It's much better at turning the trick, anyway.

And so, in due course, we come to our final "live" album. The Drive-by Truckers are the best southern rock band in the world. No, really. They are. Now you might be thinking, "Do I need southern rock in my life?" And I can see where many a folk would answer that question negatively. But some of us grew up down here, and dammit, yeah, we need southern rock in our lives. And the Truckers provide that in spades for us. And we love them. Every plastered minute of them. So, there you go.

A little while back Patterson Hood, front man driving force behind the Truckers, got it into his head that the world really needed a "redneck rock opera", loosely chronicling the mythology of Lynyrd Skynyrd as seen through the eyes of an Alabama teenager reared on 70's arena rock. You've got to give him credit for originality, at the very least. The thing is this, though. The Drive-by Truckers, critical darlings and kick-ass rock and roll gods that they might be, are critical darlings and kick-ass rock and roll gods of a very small subset of a very small section of a minor movement of the indie rock scene.

That means they're broke. And broke people have a hard time producing double-disc rock-operas about anything, let alone Lynyrd Skynyrd. So they had a brilliant idea. They decided to make (you guessed it) a live album that they could then sell, thusly generating funds for more, um, visionary projects. Therefore we now have Alabama Ass Whoopin'.

I've seen the Truckers play five or six times now. I was the audience of no less than two of the shows that this particular album was taken from. The Truckers, live, are a force of nature. A three-guitar hydra swimming perilously close to the Charybdas of 70's power anthems, but a force of nature nonetheless. Alabama Ass Whoopin' is not a force of nature. It's alright, where alright is pronounced AHW-ITE and means "yeah, it don't suck."

At this point you're probably aware that I wanted more. I don't begrudge them my money though. I've willing donated my $15 to the Patterson Hood obsessive-compulsive fund, and that's fine with me. If you're a poor schmuck stuck in Ann Arbor or some other equally not-southern town it might give you an idea of what you're missing. But it all seems pre-packaged and canned, right down to Patterson's rants about his mom's remarriage in Dollywood. Maybe it's just missing the copious amounts of beer.

Or maybe it's just not live. Maybe in order to hear live music you have to go to live shows. Yeah, maybe that's it. Who'd've thunk it?