Shelly and I have agreed on an awful lot since we started reading each other's reviews regularly about 3 years ago. But there is perhaps nothing I've disagreed with her about more than the relative quality of live albums. I find live albums (at least for the most part) to be great stuff. She, on the other hand, feels differently. Check out what she wrote in a recent review of a live album she actually did like:

I by and large find them to be annoying, grating, badly recorded, and painfully underproduced.

And while I'm not sure if any of those terms really applies to Social Distortion's 1998 live release, Live at the Roxy, I can safely say it isn't one of the better live albums in my vast collection.

Social D has been popular with punks for over two decades now, despite the fact they've released only 7 albums since forming in 1978 in LA. Even that total includes Mainliner, which was nothing more than a compilation of early singles and b-sides. Lead vocalist Mike Ness has major pull in the punk community, and his embrace of other genres (most notably country) has led to him being a popular figure throughout the rest of the rock community as well.

Recorded over three nights in April of 1998, Live at the Roxy is an ok live album, but is certainly nothing to get your panties in a bunch over. Casual fans will like that most of the band's better known and most popular songs are here. Diehards will want it because they're diehards.

Two of the band's most recognizable singles open the record. Story of My Life is described by Ness as being a song about being "a day late and a dollar short." This live version is punctuated by punchy drum fills and rolls at nearly every turn, and Ness manages to pour his entire heart into the vocals. Bad Luck follows hot on Story's heels, with hardly a break between the two. This song is about as close to pure pop punk as Social D has gotten over the years.

Ness shows some major guts in his choice of covers, tackling not only The Rolling Stones but Johnny Cash as well. The version of Under My Thumb here is terrible, and while the Stones were a huge influence on Ness, it's hard to picture there being any worse cover of this song than this one. Thankfully, the Cash cover that cloes the album, Ring of Fire, is eons better. Ness' voice has a bit of tenderness and vulnerability to it, which despite the upbeat punk arrangement, gives the song its true strength.

Casual fans will delight in the fact that older songs like Mommy's Little Monster, The Creeps, and Telling Them are given first class treatment on this record, with electrifying live versions.

Despite being recorded in 1998, Ness is already railing against "mall punks" here, just before ripping into a solid version of Prison Bound, a rollicking rock song that sounds like the Stones on steroids.

Unfortunately, that's about it for highlights. Ness' stage banter becomes annoying and un-necesssary, usually just announcing the title of the next song, but always being sure to throw in a "motherf*ckers!" yell at the end of a line here and there. Yawn. Outside of the mall punk rant, almost all of this stage banter could have been cut and the product would have been just fine.

Other tracks, like Another State of Mind and Cold Feelings find the band sounding as if they are merely going through the motions. Ness sounds bored singing these songs, and even the tracks that at least have something going for them, like the melodic I Was Wrong, sound all too lifeless, especially since the band has built up a reputation as a solid live act.

Thankfully, Ball and Chain is a shining bit of emotion in an album that too often lacks it.

If you're looking for a one stop shop for a Social Distortion album, Live at the Roxy should not be your choice. While it isn't a bad record, it lacks the charisma, energy, and most importantly, the performances, to warrant anything more than 3 stars and a very tepid recommendation. Casual fans would be much better served by checking out either the band's 1990 self titled effort, or 1992's Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell.

3 stars.

Recommended: Yes