LIVE’R THAN YOU’LL EVER BE
Live’r Than You’ll Ever Be (also known as The Greatest Group on Earth) is a bootleg recording of the Rolling Stones’ concert in Oakland, California, from 9 November 1969. It was one of the first live rock music bootlegs and was made notorious as a document of their 1969 tour of the United States. The popularity of the bootleg forced the Stones’ label Decca Records to release the live album Get Yer Ya-Yas Out! The Rolling Stones in Concert in 1970. Live’r is also one of the earliest commercial bootleg recordings in rock history, released in December 1969, just two months after the Beatles’ Kum Back and five months after Bob Dylan’s Great White Wonder. Like the two earlier records, Live’r’s outer sleeve is plain white, with its name stamped on in ink. (More from Wikipedia)
The Rolling Stones album, on the Lurch Records label, was released in other editions besides the one that I have. My copy of The Greatest Group on Earth has plain red lettering in one corner of an otherwise blank record cover (or maybe no lettering at all; the cover is gone now of course), but other versions have a big red star and “Greatest Group on Earth” in big block letters. The same recordings in the same order have also been issued under the name Live’r Than You’ll Ever Be (on Lurch Records, and on Hobo Records, or with no label name at all).
The Rolling Stones’ bootleg album, The Greatest Group on Earth is mostly familiar material as might be expected in a live concert. However, until I got this album, I did not know or at least remember the song “I’m Free” (a different song from the well-known track, “I’m Free” from the Who’s album Tommy); it had been the b-side for the Stones’ second #1 song, “Get off of My Cloud”. The album also includes two Chuck Berry songs, “Carol” and “Little Queenie”. “Carol” was released as a single in January 1964, charting only in France, and was also on their first album, The Rolling Stones. While “Little Queenie” was never recorded by the Stones on a single or a studio album as far as I have been able to tell, “Carol” as well as “Little Queenie” are included on their second live album, Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out! The Rolling Stones in Concert (1970). According to Wikipedia: “It [Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!] was reported to have been issued in response to the well known bootleg Live’r Than You’ll Ever Be” (the alternate name of The Greatest Group on Earth).
(September 2017)
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Anyway, here is what and who I talked about last year:
September 2017 – 1980’s garage rock band THE TELL-TALE HEARTS; Story of the Month on Repo Man; also, bootleg records, Live’r Than You’ll Ever Be (the Rolling Stones), Kum Back (the Beatles), Great White Wonder (Bob Dylan), John Birch Society Blues (Bob Dylan), The Basement Tapes (Bob Dylan), Let it Be (the Beatles), the Stooges, Iggy Pop.
(Year 8 Review)
