My goodness, I do seem to have quite a number of live albums. I checked ahead, and it looks like the next eleven albums are going to be live recordings.
In no way is this my entire live album collection, however. There are also the live albums that I’ve not yet ripped (Metallica comes to mind), and the ones whose titles do not begin with the word “live”.
Regardless, I do love a good live album. Let’s dive in, shall we?

Lycia - Live

The concert series starts with a rather unusual entry among live albums. The audience is nearly mute throughout this entire album - I only recall hearing them at the very beginning. Thus, the only thing to indicate that this is a live recording is the presence of “concert reverb” throughout.
Still, this is a good album - it shows Lycia at their best, and makes me wish that I’d been able to go to one of their chows back in the day. Alas, the opportunity is lost.

Faith No More - Live at Brixton Academy

This is a particularly fun live album. If you know Faith No More, than you know that they like to play around with music. Nowhere is this more clear than when they’re performing live. Their performance constantly feels like it’s on the verge of erupting into a spontaneous jam session. The band will occasionally go off on a brief musical tangent, and acouple times, Mike Patton would toss pop lyrics right into the middle of a song (during We Care a Lot, he briefly broke into The Right Stuff by New Kids on the Block).
Black Sabbath fans may be interested to know that the War Pigs recording included on the first “Nativity in Black” tribute compilation came from this album.

Twisted Sister - Live at Wacken: The Reunion

As the title, implies, this concert recording marked the end of the Twisted Sister breakup. They’d broken up after they rel;eased “Love is for Suckers,” but their record label had been releasing a pile of live alums in the meantime.
The concert is excellent - it really shows why Twisted Sister gained the level of popularity that they had in their prime. They give off a high level of energy at all times, and Dee Snider is constantly talking to the audience, trying to keep them noisy and involved.
As a bit of a side note, this is my favorite kind of live album. Rather than simply being a compilation of live recordings from several different shows, this is one single live performance, presented from beginning to end. That’s not to say that the other kind is bad, but I really prefer hearing the flow of a full concert.

Queen - Live at Wembley ‘86

Epic. Simply Epic.
At this point, it should come as no surprose that I’m very fond of this album. It’s Queen, for chrissakes, and it would appear that the true epic power of Queen can only be fully appreciated in a concert setting.
Apparently this concert was a beast. Queen played all of their own best songs, as well as a handful of “golden oldies.” It was a relentless onslaught of great music, and I’m sure that those who were fortunate enough to have attended the show still look back on it fondly. I certainly would.
One particularly amusing (if slightly morbid) moment came when Freddie Mercury, addressing rumors that Queen was planning to break up, “Forget those rumors; we’re gonna stay together till we f***ing well die, I’m sure of it.”
Clearly, he was right.

Corvus Corax - Live auf dem Waescherschloss

This was a particularly interesting live album. First, there’s the fact that I have no idea what’s being said between songs - to say that my German vocabulary is rather small is like saying that water is rather moist.
Second, there’s the audience. It was odd (and awesome) to hear an audience reacting to medieval peasant music in the same way that one expecte to hear an audience reacting to rock n’ roll. Then again, this was the “rock n’ roll” of the middle ages: fast-paced, popular, and demonized by the church.