(My View of) Live Albums (and concerts on DVD/Blu-ray)

As an avid collector of physical music, I often browse articles, reviews, and news items online to find out what re-releases or deluxe edition releases of old music there is coming out. I am particularly interested in super deluxe editions of albums I liked from the 80s.

When it comes to super deluxe editions, what I look for are extended mixes, unreleased songs, bonus/b-side tracks, and a 5.1 mix.  In reading forums online, I find that some collectors prefer demos and live versions, including complete concerts - whether that be a CD, DVD or Blu-ray.

In general I dislike recorded concerts, not being a fan of poorer quality versions of songs that are somewhat distorted/muddied (to my ears), often containing irrelevant crowd noises/voices, and sometimes so far removed from the original song that it doesn't resemble it at all (some of Prince's live jams are guilty of that).  In fact, I've been to many concerts where I did not recognise the (often popular and normally instantly recognisable) song being played, until the chorus, and sometimes not even then. These days I rarely go to concerts, preferring to spend my money on physical music of studio quality songs.

I have a number of live albums, as well as concert DVDs/Blu-rays, but many are components of some larger box set.  I used to buy live albums early in my collecting career, but soon realised that a) in my mind they are not part of the artist's collection (I limit that to studio recordings) and b) I hardly ever listen to them.

These thoughts got me wondering if there were any live albums that I really enjoyed.  Off the top of my head, I thought of two, but one of those is Kiss: Alive, which probably shouldn't be classed as a live album as it was overdubbed in the studio to correct a number of mistakes made when recording.

That being said, my favourite (and, ignoring the aforementioned Kiss album, the only live album I enjoy) is Cheap Trick's "At Budokan."  It was the 24th vinyl LP I purchased and the very first live concert one.  16 years later they released the rest of the concert (another 12 tracks) as "Budokan II" and 4 years after that released a combined set called "The Complete Budokan Concert" (it is missing tracks 7-9 from Budokan II as those had been recorded on a different tour).