The unfortunate riots in Baltimore have led to a bizarre situation at Camden Yards in Baltimore, where the hometown Orioles have been playing the Chicago White Sox in an empty stadium due to the situation outside. It's clearly had an impact on some of the players...White Sox starter Jeff Samardzija was rocked for six runs in the first inning today, perhaps nervous because the whole world wasn't watching him. It made us baseball fans at Music Times if similar things have ever happened in the music world? Not quite, but we did find a number of "live" albums that were recorded with no actual audience in attendance. Check out a few examples, from Pink Floyd to Björk.
Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii by Pink Floyd (1972)
Pink Floyd is no stranger to live spectacle, whether that's giant inflatable pigs, or the massive wall erected throughout the performance of album The Wall. The band's first concert documentary, Live at Pompeii, features a set-up both minimalistic and grandiose. Director Adrian Maben had been trying to work with the band for years leading up to the release of the video, and was struck with inspiration while visiting the historic Roman city. His complaints against famous concert videos released up until that point, including Woodstock and Gimme Shelter (by The Rolling Stones), was that the films featured almost as much footage of the audience as of the performers themselves, which was a distraction from the true subject matter. Thus he suggested staging a live Pink Floyd concert in the middle of a Roman amphitheatre, with no crowd to distract either the band or those filming. The effect was almost creepy, as Pink Floyd play for millions whom it can't see.
Boingo Alive by Oingo Boingo (1988)
Oingo Boingo had less of an artistic concept behind its lonely live album, and more of a commercial one. The band had moved from A&M Records to MCA a few years earlier, which created some issues for licensing its music: The band needed to work with its former label when licensing any of its music for television or radio...a thorn in its side, essentially. The less-than-obvious solution was to record all of the songs again under the guise of a live album, and then market those recordings instead. Few advertisers are going to want to deal with the background noise of a crowd, so the band recorded the song "live" in-studio with no audience. That meant less editing, less time and less expense for the band in the long haul.
Plague Mass by Diamanda Galás (1991)
Another example of an album where the "where" is almost as important as the "what." Avant Garde performer Diamanda Galás has one of the most unique, and frequently terrifying, voices in music. For her concept album on the suffering of AIDS victims, the experimental performer set up her album Plague Mass as an actual religious ceremony dedicated to despair. What better place to stage a mass than an actual Catholic church? We're not entirely sure how Galás managed to convince the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York to allow her to record the hour-plus long album, which included tracks such as "Sono l'Antichristo" and "Let Us Praise The Masters of Slow Death," which proposes a sadistic god. Another great reason to record in a cathedral: The acoustics make the vocalist's delivery that much more intense.
Axes by Electrelane (2005)
Sometimes it's difficult for casual listeners to understand all the work that goes into the standard recording process for the albums of their favorite bands. As tight as it may sound by the time its reaches record store shelves, most albums feature instrumental parts recorded individually and then pieced together by a careful producer. There's something to be said about bands that kill it as a live act, but there's also something to be said for performers and studio musicians who come in, sit down by themselves and get it done. British band Electrelane wasn't comfortable with the idea of recording an album piecemeal however, so when it got to work on Axes, the band opted to simply stand in a circle and run through the album in its entirety to capture a "different kind of energy." Granted, producer Steve Albini still had plenty of work to do once the masters were on tape, but the band made lining the instrumental tracks up much, much easier.
Voltaïc by Björk (2009)
Performers frequently package live albums and DVDs together. After all, you can't watch a live performance while you drive but you can still jam with the audio of that performance. Björk tends to do things differently, and she did so again with her 2009 Voltaïc set, which featured a live concert DVD of "Volta" tour, a collection of music videos to accompany the tracks on her album Volta, and a CD of remixes. It would have been simple to round off the set with a live-audio version the concert DVD, but instead she released a disc titled "Songs from the Volta Tour Performed Live at the Olympic Studios." She went out of her way a made live recordings of the same songs she had been singing on tour...except from the comfort of a studio.
