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It was a time before the Internet--before file-sharing and downloading left much of the rock discography only a mouse-click away--and I was a budding rock obsessive, haunting the racks of Big Star Records, my local second-hand vinyl emporium, poring over sleeve notes and track listings, planning a voyage of discovery across a mysterious classic rock canon.

My preferred point-of-entry was the Live Album, a strategy inspired by a summer spent obsessing over my dad's battered copy of the Who's Live At Leeds: a scrappy faux-bootleg housing a sheaf of photocopied Who memorabilia and six sonic monsters that the band struggled to control. It was the epic, excursive "My Generation" that really sent me, Pete Townshend's riffs leading the group through a series of high-drama instrumental vignettes the studio version had never even hinted at.

Live At Leeds convinced me of this: a Greatest Hits compilation might contain a group's most famous tracks, but Live Albums delivered the same, only louder, wilder, and with longer solos. Ergo, Live Albums were objectively, unquestionably better.

At their best, Live Albums freeze the moments we all wish we'd witnessed: unexpected cover versions, guest appearances, performances that utterly eclipse the studio originals. Moments like Nina Simone and a gospel choir re-interpreting "My Sweet Lord" as a 20-minute anti-war hymn before an audience of GIs at Fort Dix military base on 1972's Emergency Ward; like the feverish interplay between drummers Clyde Stubblefield and Nate Jones throughout a 13-minute "Cold Sweat" off James Brown's Say It Live And Loud: Live In Dallas 08.26.68; like Aretha Franklin walking Ray Charles onstage for her encore on At The Fillmore West, trading verses with him throughout the sinfully funky gospel of Spirit In The Dark.

Live Albums possess an unguarded intimacy, the warts'n'all the studio aims to airbrush away. The Rolling Stones of 1970's Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! played loose and dropped plenty of bum notes, but there's a ragged violence to "Jumpin' Jack Flash" that punches harder than the chart-topping studio take. Candid between-song banter is always a highlight, be it Lou Reed excoriating rock critic Robert Christgau on his Take No Prisoners set ("What does Robert Christgau do in bed? Is he a toe f***er?"), or George Clinton's confession that he's "higher than a motherf***er" on Funkadelic's Live: Meadowbrook, Rochester, Michigan 12th September 1971.

The greatest Live Albums feel like key scenes from a Rockumentary; their performances aren't just another night on the tour, but landmarks, milestones, moments that illuminate the artist's legend somehow. The revolutionary chaos of MC5's Kick Out The Jams--and the frenzied parties at Detroit's Old Grande Ballroom that the album documents--was so crucial to the mythos of the group that it remains the definitive MC5 album--detuned guitars, feedback and all.

In the hilarious music video for Yo La Tengo's "Sugarcube," Bob Odenkirk (playing headmaster of an imaginary School Of Rock) lectures his students on the ‘Foghat Principle,' that your every fourth album must be "Double Live." While Foghat Live was, in fact, the blues-rockers' seventh release, and a single disc at that, the Foghat Principle seemed to rule the Classic Rock era, when cutting concert albums was a staple of a touring rock band's career. Today, groups like Pearl Jam and the Who sell soundboard recordings from every concert via their fanclubs, while British company Concertlive have hooked up with artists like the Raconteurs, Brett Anderson and Roots Manuva to sell recordings of that evening's performance at the merchandise desk minutes after the gig's finished. The Live Album as we once knew it, however, now seems a rarity, and recent efforts by multi-platinum rockers Red Hot Chili Peppers and Oasis are little better than tepid Greatest Hits packages with crowd noise tacked on.

Illicit live recording, however, still thrives, with modern technology offering digital recording devices that are easily hidden from venue security; indeed, most of us could adequately bootleg a concert ourselves on a mobile phone. The advent of the internet, however, means these modern bootleggers are more likely to be sharing their recordings with fellow fans for free, rather than trying to turn a sneaky profit on a stack of Xerox-inlaid C90s down the local flea market.

Not so the mysterious collector who, earlier this year, pressed up 100 copies of a previously uncirculated Velvet Underground show at New York City Gymnasium, 1967, and sold them on ebay. Claimed to be John Cale's final gig with the band, its authenticity has been questioned by fans, with one web site suggesting the tape might be the work of an imaginative Velvets covers band; but the searing 19-minute "Sister Ray" sounds like the real thing to me.

To some, the interest stirred by the discovery of a 40-year-old recording of a pop concert might seem puzzling. But for those of us with a fascination for rock's evolution, such recordings are precious relics, offering the invaluable opportunity to listen in on history being made. There's very few of us who could claim of such epochal gigs, "I was there;" but at least, sometimes, we can better imagine how it must have sounded.