Eight superb live albums released in the 1990s

There are a few trends that develop when you look back at live music albums over the past few decades. That’s not always about the genre of the music, though it’s fair to say that many of the top live albums from the 1970s were by classic rock artists. In some decades there were lots of live albums pushed out, probably seen as an easy, quick, and cheap way to fulfill a contract for another record.

That doesn’t always ensure great quality though. And if you saw the possibility that some labels or groups might be trawling through old recordings to see what they could release, it could be a worrying signal. Will they churn out what they have and package it as a collector's item or unreleased rarities? Sometimes that’s a great treasure trove of music, or maybe there was a good reason why it hadn’t been released before.

In the 1990s there seems to be a higher number of live albums of older material being released. The actual recordings were often anywhere from just a few years previously to over 30 years earlier. The great news is that on many of those delayed releases, the actual quality of the music and the live performance was exceptionally good.  Here are eight of those superb 1990s live albums with recordings from way back before then.

Eight live albums from the 1990s but recorded years before 

The Clash - From Here to Eternity 

This album was released in 1999 as the band's first-ever official live album. It captures several years of live gigs by the band. Those were spread over five years from the most prominent period for the Clash, 1977 to 1992.

The Clash were renowned as an amazing live band. Perhaps that was helped by the energy that punk music brought to the stage. It certainly comes across well on this album as the band rock more than the Casbah!

It’s not an ideal replication of a gig by the band though. Irrespective of where or when the song was recorded the album unusually uses the original date of the song to work out its position on the track listings. Although that could, and perhaps should, disrupt the flow it doesn’t at all. The sound of the album is as if the songs were recorded one after the other at the same gig. It’s an excellent example of a live album.