"Are you ready for start time?' says Lucas 'Fats' in the opening minutes of Live at The Apollo. 'Why yes we are Lucas!' (I mutter to myself while writing this). What comes next is the sonics of adoring screams, followed by James Brown live."
What makes a great live album? The most memorable of live recordings have been said to capture the atmosphere of a room, the spontaneity that makes a performance unrepeatable. It's safe to say that the best live albums of all time offer a reason to return, beyond the existing studio recordings.
The emergence of live LPs as a popular mode of listening to our favourite albums has always been understandable to us, some of music history's most memorable moments immortalised by quality live recordings, capturing the energy, essence and aura of many a great band or solo artist, live to your living room.
You no longer 'had to be there'. Whether you were in the audience, gutted to not make the show, or maybe it was just way before your time, a live album can help you revisit the magic as if you were actually there. A vehicle to inspire a new appreciation for an artist's sound and craft. At Rough Trade, we have been fortunate enough to immortalise some of our own special live moments taking place within our performance spaces, including in-stores with Yard Act, HotWax and Jehnny Beth - our Rough Trade In Store of the Year 2025.
So what are some of the best live albums of all time? From landmark jazz and soul performances to raw rock shows and contemporary favourites, these are our picks of the best live albums to bring the magic of the stage to your record collection.
John Coltrane - Live at the Village Vanguard (1962)
From one pioneering live jazz album to another. Live At The Village Vanguard is John Coltrane’s first official live record. Its free-form influence and addition of Eric Dolphy on bass clarinet was initially criticised by jazz enthusiasts, but it is now regarded as one of the greatest live jazz albums of all time and a true companion for any Coltrane fan.
James Brown - Live at the Apollo (1963)
"Are you ready for start time?" says Lucas 'Fats' in the opening minutes of Live at The Apollo. "Why yes we are Lucas" (I mutter to myself while writing this). What comes next is the sonics of adoring screams, followed by James Brown live.
Recorded in Harlem, October 1962, Live at The Apollo is the perfect live record, with its stumps and attitude, the acclaim and success of this album were enormous. The Grammy Hall of Fame inducted album stayed in the Billboard Charts for over sixty six weeks with many record shops struggling to keep up with the demand on its initial release. It's an essential for Rough Trade and R&B dynamite for anyone who hasn’t heard it yet.
Johnny Cash - Folsom Prison Mobile Fidelity Edition (1968)
“Don’t you know this is being recorded?” says Cash on Dark As A Dungeon, before launching back into its final verse, the now petering out country singer addressing a room of convicts in Folsom’s prison hall; a role only Johnny Cash could play. This all-hits catalogue, accompanied by the sharpness of the Tennessee Three, re-ignited popular interest in Cash.
Audio highlights include renditions of Cocaine Blues, 25 Minutes To Go and closing with Greystone Chapel, a song written by Folsom prisoner Glen Sherley which Cash stayed up the night before the concert to learn - the country outlaw personified.
Talking Heads - Stop Making Sense Tour (1984)
Since A24 restored and re-released the Stop Making Sense Tour - the ‘greatest concert of all time' - there has been a Talking Heads renaissance across our shops. This particular live LP takes recordings from that tour and highlights the excellent musicianship of Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz and Jerry Harrison and their accompanying ensemble. David Byrne’s leading performance and dance choreography remains completely unique and is something that to this day has never been recreated.
Nirvana - MTV Unplugged In New York (1994)
MTV Unplugged in New York was inspired greatly by Mark Lanegan’s The Winding Street, an album featuring Kurt Cobain on guest vocals as well as a lesser acclaimed cover of Leadbelly’s Where Did You Sleep Last Night.
Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged features additional musicianship by Lori Goldston and The Meat Puppets. The album is most adored for Cobain’s mastery and dichotic vocals and wasn’t released physically until seven months after he died, making his legacy and the performance ever more tragic.
Portishead - Roseland NYC Live (1998)
Portishead fans have eaten well this year with both Beth Gibbons' Lives Outgrown and Beak's (Geoff Barrow) >>>> releasing within a month of each other. But of equal merit and unnoticed by some, was the re-release of Roseland NYC Live.
First released on the 2nd of November 1998 and performed with additional orchestral accompaniment, this is the Portishead sound fully realised. Beth’s voice, rationed and reserved when delivering the words ‘give me a reason to love you’ from Glory Box and Geoff’s enigmatic trip hop beats as well as rich string arrangements makes for an excellent listen for both casual and adoring fans.
Lauryn Hill - MTV Unplugged No.2 (2002)
An MTV Unplugged release we rarely talk about, but we should do. In our current neo soul thriving time with artists like Cleo Sol and Olivia Dean, playing this album next to those releases showed how ahead Lauryn Hill was with R&B arrangement. It's sparse and bare with just nylon string and bass guitar for accompaniment, with Hill marrying folk arrangements and raw, hip-hop gravitas and delivering a unique listening experience for fans of her music, folk and R&B alike.
Highlight tracks include Just Like Water and a stunning rendition of Bob Marley's So Much Things to Say.
DIIV- Live At The Murmrr Theatre (2017)
When DIIV first played at Rough Trade East way back in 2016 they had just released their second record Is the Is Are, an indie darling of a record that's found its way onto too many Spotify playlists, but is genuinely excellent.
However, the latter part of their European tour was cancelled for health reasons and it wouldn’t be until 2019 before the group properly resurfaced. With Live at The Murmrr (recorded in 2017), DIIV reworked compositions from their first two albums for acoustic, as well as covering a couple of artists that inspired them as a group, with Zachary Cole Smith referring to the concert as ‘a reset’ for the band.
Amy Winehouse - Live At Glastonbury 2007 (2023)
For many Londoners, Amy Winehouse is the quintessential artist of the noughties with Live at Glastonbury a wonderful complement. This album is perfect for a ‘Glasto re-live’ and it cemented Amy as a star. Tracks like Back to Black, Rehab and The Zutons-written, Mark Ronson-produced Valerie capture the charm and vulnerability Amy possessed, securing her position as one of the UK’s all-time greats.
Cat Power - Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert (2023)
In November 2022, Cat Power took the stage at London’s Royal Albert Hall and delivered a song-for-song recreation of Bob Dylan's 1966 Manchester Free Trade Hall concert (it became known as the “Royal Albert Hall Concert” due to a mislabeled bootleg).
An outstanding homage to one of the most transformative live sets of all time, Cat Power and co follow every contour of Dylan’s set, including the fabled switch halfway through from solo acoustic performance to electric full-band rock.
The Yussef Dayes Experience - Live From Malibu (2024)
By 2018, South East London had become the home of jazz for the London scene. Nights hosted by Steam Down created and nurtured an environment for jazz musicians to perform regularly, and quickly brought international attention to artists like Sons of Kemet, Moses Boyd and Yussef Dayes. Live at Malibu continues on from those influences and is a document of the modern live London sound that Yussef encapsulates so beautifully. It includes stunning performances from his LP Black Classical Music (one of our Albums of the Year for 2023).
His band, all longtime collaborators, include Rocco Palladino, Elijah Fox, Alexander Bourt and Grammy Award-winner Malik Venna on sax. This record is a must for jazz lovers looking to be influenced by something new.
Cameron Winter – Live at Carnegie Hall (2026)
Sometimes the most compelling live records begin with the simplest setup: one voice, one piano and a room ready to listen. Recorded at New York’s Carnegie Hall in December 2025, Live at Carnegie Hall captures Geese frontman Cameron Winter revisiting songs from his debut Heavy Metal, reshaping them for solo piano alongside three previously unreleased compositions. An essential album for anyone drawn to the strange world of his solo work.
Further Listening...
Can't get enough of the thrill of live performance? Don't miss our long list of some of the most defining moments of live music history.
Live at Wembley Stadium is a collection of songs captured across two unforgettable nights in Summer 2023 which saw Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Alex James and Dave Rowntree aka Blur, play the biggest shows of the band’s 30+ year career to date. Johnny Cash stuns again with Live at San Quentin. One of the finest live documents of the rock era, the Allman Brothers' Live At Fillmore East. Recorded live at Detroit's Grande Ballroom in 1968, MC5's Kick out the Jams still sounds astonishingly powerful almost six decades on. Bob Marley and The Wailers' Live at the Lyceum marked the ‘crossover’ of reggae into popular music and established Marley as a hero. Bill Withers' Live at Carnegie Hall is still regarded as one of the best live performances in the history of soul music. Beyoncé’s historic headlining Coachella performance across two weekends in April 2018, Homecoming: The Live Album. Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band's first concert appearance outside of America, at Hammersmith Odeon, London 75'. And last but not least, the breathtaking Nina Simone with Live at the Village Gate.