Tom Waits has a new live album coming out. You can get 8 full length tracks--just under 40 minutes--from the forthcoming release for free on his site. Requires you surrender a valid email address, however.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy on Oct 13, 2009 - 42 comments

I don't know how these people got their fairly decent recording devices into a bunch of gigs... but I can guess why. [more inside]
posted by pompomtom on Sep 25, 2009 - 34 comments

Here’s a cool concept. Top breakthrough bands of the day playing LIVE on TV late every Friday night. Such was The Midnight Special - from 1972 - 1981 (though the glory days were the early to mid 70s, that lost decade somewhere between the meltdown of the hippie dream and the coincident eruptions of PUNK + DISCO upon planet rock). [more inside]
posted by philip-random on Sep 4, 2009 - 45 comments

Ben Walker, author of the Twitter song, webcast a gig in Oxford last night. Lo-fi posters were printed up and a Twitter stream was running on the back wall. You can also download some of the guitar tabs, see photos of rehearsals or download the songs.
posted by bwerdmuller on May 2, 2009 - 11 comments

Metafilter is certainly no stranger to music mashups, or even live music mashups, but a few artists are taking things a step further with live music and video mashups. Not prerecorded mashups of live music and video, but live performances of DJs (often calling themselves "VJs") mashing up music and video together on the fly. [more inside]
posted by Grimp0teuthis on Apr 8, 2009 - 14 comments

Feel like listening to a concert tonight? Something classical? Or maybe folk is a bit more your style? World? Jazz? Nearly every day, two or three more live concert recordings are added to CBC Radio2's 'Concerts on Demand' library, with nearly 900 concerts now in the list. Each concert is given just as presented live, and you can either stream the whole thing, or choose track by track. Timings are given for all the music, and photo galleries and full descriptions and credits round it all off. All in all, it's a fabulous presentation, and there is more music here than you will ever be able to keep up with!
posted by woodblock100 on Feb 10, 2009 - 22 comments

Punkcast is a long running series of videos of live underground music in NYC shot by Joly MacFie. Each video is usually one song. The Internet Archive hosts its videos and offers downloads in a variety of formats. MacFie also has a YouTube channel with 480 videos and a video podcast [iTunes link, feedburner link]. Here are a few bands that caught my fancy: The Icicles and The Besties, The Slits (1, 2 ), Andrew W. K., Oneida (1, 2), The Long Blondes, The Gossip, Acid Mothers Temple & Cosmic Inferno, Art Brut, Be Your Own Pet, Cansei de Ser Sexy, Lesbians on Ecstasy, The Fall, Fred Frith, Rose Melberg and Jennifer O'Connor, The Horrors, The Homosexuals, Bat for Lashes, Radio 4 and Teddybears, Kimya Dawson and Tiny Masters of Today, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Nikki Sudden.
posted by Kattullus on Dec 25, 2008 - 12 comments

AOL Sessions has live videos from more than 150 different artists specially recorded for the series. Here are just a few of the artists on offer: Paul McCartney, Mary J. Blige, Modest Mouse, Tori Amos, Robyn, Tom Petty, Rhymefest, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Natasha Bedingfield, Cat Power, Toby Keith, Lil' Wayne, Robert Plant, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Kelly Rowland, Weezer and Brian Wilson. To the left of the videos there's a Q&A link that has short interview videos with the artists as well as behind the scenes footage and longer interviews.
posted by Kattullus on Sep 22, 2008 - 20 comments

The Ultimate Bootleg Experience is an ecclectic mp3 blog dedicated to live boots with a good number of posts up, and the links in the archives seem to stay live for quite a while.
posted by jonson on Nov 13, 2007 - 19 comments

The World's Greatest Live Music Show is back on the air [warning: YT-heavy first sentence]. Friday's season premiere featured inspired performances by Arctic Monkeys, CSS and The Hold Steady. Next week: Joanna Newsom, Grinderman, Travis, and more.
posted by chuckdarwin on May 6, 2007 - 33 comments

Drugs at music festivals are nothing new. Sometimes this results in comically bad journalism and sometimes the results are not so funny. At the Wakarusa Music Festival this past year police used new, creepy tools pursue drug dealers on the Festival grounds in an attempt to seperate the drugs from the music.
posted by aburd on Sep 16, 2006 - 28 comments

Dutch broadcast station VPRO's website is Holland’s biggest platform for alternative music. Here's a link to a shitload of streaming live concerts and tracks. You'll have to do a bit of cut and paste once there, but it's the easiest way for me to link to the list. For the cut-and-paste-inept, there's a standard interface, but the site's not in english.
posted by dobbs on Jul 8, 2006 - 11 comments

Thomas Dolby, 80's Pop Icon, '90s Tech Mogul, Alton Brown lookalike, Somnificationist and NOT the inventor of Dolby noise reduction is returning to live touring after a few hundred internet years away. He's performing solo with lots of cool gadgets (and blogging). And, perfectly timed for promotional purposes, he's joined the K-Fed Haters.
posted by wendell on Apr 8, 2006 - 33 comments

NPR’s Live Concert Series site offers recordings of recent live performances by James Brown, Sinead O’Connor, Iron & Wine and Calexico, Son Volt, My Morning Jacket, The White Stripes, M. Ward, Sigur Ros, Bloc Party, The Decemberists, and live tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. ET, Colin Meloy.
posted by ND¢ on Jan 27, 2006 - 46 comments

Freebird!
posted by Tlogmer on Mar 21, 2005 - 99 comments

KVRX, University of Texas' radio station, has an archive of tracks recorded live in their studio. Artists include The Magnetic Fields, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Broken Social Scene, Devendra Banhart, Explosions in the Sky, Sebadoh, Mojave 3, Okkervil River, Japancakes, Call and Response, Super Furry Animals, Cat Power, I Am The World Trade Center and the sublime Paul Burch, among others.
posted by dobbs on Aug 8, 2004 - 24 comments

Clear Channel Limits Live CDs. A company called DiscLive has been working with a handful of artists to sell concert-goers a live CD -- of the show they've just seen -- after the concert. However, "Clear Channel Entertainment has bought the patent from the technology's inventors and now claims to own the exclusive right to sell concert CDs after shows." More inside...
posted by sarajflemming on May 27, 2004 - 31 comments

Live CDs, immediately after the concert. Many times after I've seen a great show, I've wished I could have a recording of the evening. Now, using CD Burners hooked up to the sound boards, ClearChannel is beta testing a program that would make soundboard quality concert CD's available to audience members immediately after a show ended. I'm torn; it's a great idea, but it's ClearChannel... I want to like it... but I want to hate it, too...
posted by jonson on Feb 8, 2003 - 25 comments

Tonight, I saw (for the 4th time) one of the greatest live bands on the planet: Sweep The Leg Johnny. They played to a half-empty room in Toronto. Recently, the band put out their fourth CD. Sadly, they're calling it quits after this tour. What are some of the bands you've told folks to Go see now!, but no one seems to listen?
posted by dobbs on Jul 11, 2002 - 36 comments

I just came from a terrific set by the local (Pittsburgh) band Boxstep and was curious, do you have a favorite "local band" or two (i.e. probably unheard of outside your city/area) you would recommend? What makes them worth checking out? [more inside]
posted by arco on Sep 9, 2001 - 23 comments