As you may already know, the fine folks at Bandcamp are waiving their fees again today to put more money into artists’ pockets (and charities’ coffers). As expected, there are countless musical goodies up on the site — including a whole crapload of new live albums. Here are 10 that landed in my mail this morning. Check them out and spend a few bucks on one you like — after all, it’s not like you’ve blown your concert budget on tickets lately. (And if you’re a fan of Sonic Youth, Superchunk, Hold Steady or the Yep Roc catalog, there are plenty more releases to choose from on their pages.)
The Hold Steady
Live in Nashville 9-5-19
THE PRESS RELEASE: “On Sept. 5, 2019 we started out our Nashville Constructive Summer weekend at the Basement East with this show. The Rock*A*Teens came up from Atlanta and played an amazing opening set, and we took the stage in front of a really amped up crowd. We hadn’t been to Nashville in a long time before this, and it was worth the wait. Thrashing Thru The Passion was still a pretty new record, and we opened with the leadoff track Denver Haircut. It was loud, hot, and a lot of fun. The encore started with Blackout Sam, one of our new favorites, and ended as usual on Killer Parties. This was the start of a beautiful weekend, and the scene seemed especially open and community minded. The Basement East has since been damaged by a tornado as well as facing the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, and we raise a toast in honor of this great club and its excellent employees.”
Sonic Youth
Live In Yugoslavia 1985/1987
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Originally released as a bootleg cassette on FV Založba, a tape and vinyl label best-known for their Hardcore Ljubljana LP from 1985. They released many more live tapes from the 80’s LJU: Henry Rollins, Swans, Nick Cave, NoMeansNo, etc. Radio Student (now Radio Študent) broadcast the concert(s) and promoter Igor Vidmar recorded the shows with Borut Berden. Monika Skaberne who still runs FV found the master cassette.”
Superchunk
Clambakes Vol. 4: Sur La Bouche – Live in Montreal 1993
Fruit Bats
Found a Round Stone: Live in Portland
THE PRESS RELEASE: “From Eric D. Johnson: This recording is cut down from a much larger show, a rare “evening with Fruit Bats” — no opener, two sets — that ran a little over two hours. Which was really long for me. How does Phish pull it off every night? Revolution Hall is one of my favorite venues. It’s a nice theater with comfy seats, which is plush but also leads to people sitting down. I mean, a seated audience is kinda classy in a lot of ways, but I’m always looking for that extra rush of energy as the songs ramp up. At one point, you can hear me (gently) implore folks to stand up (!!). But as it was a long evening — and it being Portland, the beer selection was dank and flowing — naturally the audience got rowdier (and on their feet) as the night progressed, which you can clearly hear in the later points of this recording. This was the last night of a short tour of the Pacific Northwest in January 2019, so in it you hear some of the earliest live versions of songs off of Gold Past Life which didn’t come out until a few months later. It also includes the only live version of The Banishment Song ever, plus a couple of rarely played cuts off of Spelled in Bones.”
Silkworm
Live at Empty Bottle – 9.17.94
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Recorded at Empty Bottle in Chicago on September 17, 1994. The Flaming Lips, Engine Kid and Jessamine also played that sold out evening. It was Silkworm’s third Chicago show of the year and their first as a trio.”
Nicole Mitchell and Moor Mother
Offering – Live at Le Guess Who
THE PRESS RELEASE: “There is a traditional, ancient magic embedded in the dusty spaces surrounding Moor Mother’s afro-retrofuturist tech-jazz, amongst the noise emblazoned with phoenix fire screeds. She is an Orisha willing to embrace a foreboding cyberpunk narrative informed by Born In Flames and Space is the Place, if it will free you, the traveller, the future mystic, from a carbon-rusted sheath, so that you, a sword on fire, may burn. “How do we get it back?” Empowering these ideas are dream drones, ghosts on soundwaves burst through her instruments like a poltergeist — Nicole Mitchell conjures at her cauldron, uninhibited by the specter of spectacle, by the post-academia, five-stars-and-an-Eventbrite-link-industrial complex. Traveler, spirit, sage — your hand holds the physical, time-stamped documentation of the first collaboration between two mystics, the inimitable poet and noise musician Moor Mother and the indefatigable flautist and composer Nicole Mitchell. These two artists, diviners truthfully, spent a few years basking in the sun-spilled glow of each other’s radiance from a distance before colliding and colluding musically at the Moor Mother curated Le Guess Who Festival in Utrech, the Netherlands in 2018. That is the performance captured here, then chip-tagged, cataloged and released into the wild.”
The Minus 5
Live at Yep Roc 15
THE PRESS RELEASE: “In 2012, Yep Roc Records celebrated its 15th anniversary with a festival called YR15. Over the course of 4 raucous days and nights, 26 artists performed for Yep Roc fans from around the world at the legendary Cat’s Cradle and other venues around Chapel Hill and Carrboro, North Carolina. The Minus 5 performed on Saturday, Oct. 13. The Minus 5 put the pedal to the floor the whole time, bringing out staples from their self-titled record and In Rock, plus some covers of Nick Lowe and a series of “Young” artists, including Neil Young, Young Jessie and Scott McCaughey’s own Young Fresh Fellows. YR15 emcee John Wesley Harding also makes an appearance to perform Making Love to Bob Dylan, composed by Harding and McCaughey.”
Southern Culture On The Skids
Live at Yep Roc 15
Robyn Hitchcock
Live at Yep Roc 15
Dave Alvin and Phil Alvin
Live from Austin
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Dave Alvin and Phil Alvin captured live in Austin, Texas for an intimate performance.”
