Recent laments about the demise of the live recording struck a true and heartfelt nerve in we old-timers who grew up on the Allman Brothers at Fillmore East, Bowie's "David Live," Van Morrison's "It's Too Late to Stop Now" and others '60s and '70s artifacts. But those born after "Frampton Comes Alive" appear to have less of an affinity for a document of a live performance.
It owes, in many ways, to live albums no longer possessing the sound of  a room, an act firing on all cylinders and an audience's acceptance of alterations to recorded versions of better-known songs. "Live" albums, which can be used by an artist as a bargaining chit to negotiate their way out of deal, have a tendency to be reasonable facsimiles of a performance. The artists and producers take the tapes into studios and tweak away, adding new parts, adjusting voices and volumes and ultimately make the discs sound like they were recorded within a controlled environment.
It's a lot like wine: When a label reads California Cabernet Sauvignon it means at least 75% of the grapes fit that description. "Live," these days, also tends to refer to a percentage unless the disc is coming from an act that prides itself on its concerts, like Dave Matthews Band or Pearl Jam. Besides, if a concert is little more than triggering pre-recorded bits is it really worth documenting in the first place? Madonna has a live album, for example. Why?
Two exceptions to rule have been released this month, coincidentally by EMI labels, David Bowie "Live Santa Monica '72" (Virgin) and Willie Nelson/Wynton Marsalis "Two Men With the Blues" (Blue Note). Both have received impressive reviews, the Bowie at Pitchfork and Wynton 'n' Willie at the New York Times.
One layer that neither review gets into is precisely how the two recordings reveal the settings. Bowie's show is raw and energetic, the pieces not quite smoothly integrated and the sound ricochets up and down the dB meter - a typical occurrence at the Santa Monica Civic which seemed rundown even back then. Taken from a radio broadcast on the great KMET in its pre-metal heyday (B. Mitchell Reed, Shadoe Stevens, Stephen Clean and Jimmy Rabbit were your DJs), this is Bowie birthing the concept of Ziggy Stardust as well as glam-rock itself in front of an audience that was the polar opposite of Southern California's homegrown scene. That sense of daring permeates this performance - there's a clear contrast between the still unformed "Life on Mars?" and the easier-going "Space Oddity," to note but one distinction between what was then new or old.
The Nelson-Marsalis disc was recorded in January 2007 at  the 427-seat Allen Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York. The three venues at J@LC - there is also a concert hall and a club - defy logic in how good they sound. The Allen and Dizzy's Club have floor to ceiling glass backdrops, the Rose Theater fans out in a way that would appear to create balance issues for listeners. The truth is that you can't find three better rooms in the U.S. and the polish of the intimate Allen Room is a perfect canvas for those two men with the blues.
"Two Men" reveals a waltz through blues, jazz and country styles that abutted one another from the 1920s through the '60s with Marsalis echoing Louis Armstrong, the band echoing Louis Jordan and Nelson being a smooth iconoclast. I have visited the Lincoln Center venues annually since they opened; this is not so much a document of a magical night, but business as usual at those wondrous concert halls.
Wynton and Willie reprised that show Wednesday at the Hollywood Bowl.