The Pop Story

Art Blakey Quintet - A Night at Birdland Vol. 1 (1954)

Art Blakey via last.fm

The live album is a much sneered-at format in modern pop. These days, the live album is, at best, viewed as nothing more than a memento for those who may have been present at the gig; at worst, it’s another marketing sideline for the record label, designed to squeeze more cash from die-hard fans who already have the studio recordings, the T-shirt, the promotional mug.

It’s obviously a different thing in jazz, as so many of the classic albums I’m ploughing through from this era are live recordings. As I’ve said before, jazz seems to be all about the immediacy of a group of musicians in a room playing together, not relying on studio tricks but communicating directly to an audience right there in front of them. And obviously, to do that as a musician, you have to be very good at what you do.

Somewhere along the line (and let’s blame the Beatles, as everyone always does), the studio album became the key artifact of pop, it asserted primacy over any other kind of sonic document of a band’s true worth. We are now programmed as music fans, after decades of this being gospel, to view the live album as a second class citizen. Critics will include a few in their ‘best albums ever’ lists, but mostly they’re relegated to the bottom of the dustbin of pop history. And if that’s how music fans and critics feel, why would any new band work hard to create something like ‘A Night At Birdland’, knowing it’ll be dismissed?

It’s a shame, because before that attitude became prevalent, pop was throwing up some live gems, like Dylan’s ‘66 ‘Albert Hall’ concert - a sonic experience easily the equal of this one from Art Blakey’s crew.

A Night at Birdland Vol. 1 on Spotify