A couple of ground rules for the initial list of five: first, I'm not going to include a live album on this worst list just because I happen to not personally care for the artist's music with no other consideration. Sure, it would be easy to pick, say, a Michael Bolton live album as one of the worst of all time. But I'm not going to go that route, in fact as it happens all five of the artists in my list here are all bands whose work I greatly revere. These particular live albums of theirs just happen to be deficient in terms of sound quality, performance, song representation, technical glitches, length, etc.
second ground rule is that the live album has to be a then-current official release and not some archival issue that came out twenty years after the fact. If I included those, this list would be expanded greatly.

Anyway, here's my top five:

1. The Thirteenth Floor Elevators Live
This one gets on the list simply because it is not really a live album at all, but a fake one. And it's one of the most obviously bogus live albums in rock history, being made up of studio outtakes with "canned" crowd cheers dubbed over. The crowd sounds as if the LA Colesium were packed to the rafters (now, did the Elevators ever really play to an audience that big?) and unrealistically fades out when a song begins only to fade back in again between it and the next song. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the music other than the production, but this really should have been released as what it is - a studio outtake album.

2. The Alice Cooper Show, ALICE COOPER
Alice's first-ever live album, coming years after the theatrical peak of his band, is a pathetic document of what was one of rock's most notable stage shows of the seventies. Alice offers up half-baked (double meaning intended), abbreviated versions of his studio standards with a performance so rushed it sounds like he can't wait to get backstage and down a bottle of whiskey. The album does, however, make the perfect prologue to From The Inside as it demonstrates in painful detail why the man needed help so bad.

3. Rockin' The Fillmore, HUMBLE PIE
Well, one of the most overrated anyway, seeing as how it is frequently touted on all-time-great album lists, and is considered to be the Pie's definitive recording. Uh . . . sorry, neither. This live performance is bludgeoning blues overkill setting new standards in boring repetitiveness, nearly as unlistenable in the main as Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music. I defy anyone to sit through all twenty-four minutes of "Walk On Gilded Splinters" without screaming "ARRRRGGGHHHH!" and running across the room to hit the button for your disc changer.
The magic abundant in the first four Humble Pie studio albums is absolutely nowhere to be found here. Only two of the seven tracks are from those albums and both songs ("I'm Ready" and "Stone Cold Fever") are hopelessly trashed here. Steve Marriott could really sing, but he decides to forgo that here in favor of screaming, which certainly is better suited the discordant playing. This was Peter Frampton's last studio album with the Pie, and for all you can hear he might not as well have been on board for this one. Fortunately, as we all know, Frampton would a few years later get to showcase his talents with a much better live album . . .

4. THE ROLLING STONES, Love You Live
The Stones really had a problem coming up with a decent live album during their classic years, with only Get Your Ya-Yas Out being above the level of bootleg quality. Love You Live was probably the worst, however, being a set of uninspired and unevenly-chosen numbers from the repritore, recorded when the band was in a state of transition and perhaps the second-most lethargic stage of its existence (next to the mid-eighties hiatus). All the old classics are slaughtered so badly that one is almost grateful for the horrendous sound quality. "Sympathy For The Devil", the album closer, suffers the worse - it is put to an absolutely horrible funk-boogie beat which renders the song unlistenable. The only real bright spot comes from a highly-energized performance of the rockabilly standard "Around and Around", which closes a set of otherwise stilted blues covers on the third side.

5. Live at Last, BLACK SABBATH
There's not much else to say about Sabbath's first official live release except that it speaks volumes that fans bootlegged the exact same concert with hand-held tape recorders and got much better sound than the official disc did. Like many similar poor-quality live releases of the past, this one has in recent years been remastered. I have no doubt the album is much, much better now, but as the old saying goes, you can't make a silk purse out of a bat's head . . .

Hmmmm.... a couple to add to that

Kiss- Alive 3
The best lineup Kiss ever had, musically speaking, should have been able to do better with a live album. It's obvious the crowd sounds are fakes (even going so far as to make it sound like they are "panting" in "Heaven's On Fire" with the help of the volume control). Kiss were, and still are, a brilliant live act. Bootlegs from the Revenge tour show that they were on fire at that time. Why they chose to put this out, I'll never know. And the less said about the accompanying "live film" Kiss Konfidential the better..

Deep Purple- Made In Japan Do the world a favour- if you find it in a shop- BURN IT! Tommy Bolin was totally out of it and can barely manage a few stabs of his guitar leaving Jon Lord to fill in with louder than normal keyboards. Coverdale and Hughes scream a lot- an awful lot- when they announce songs. It's a sad document of a brilliant live band. And all the band members agree. Yes, I know Benn, it has been re-released as a double cd called "This Time Around"- but quite frankly, if the first album was the best they could salvage, I'd hate to hear the worst...

Honourable Mention
The Eagles- Eagles Live
It's not totally awful (The version of "Take It To The Limit" is brilliant for Meisner's soaring ad-libs at the end) but it really is the band in the studio. Most of the tracks are carbon copies of the studio cuts and in-between song banter sounds forced (the whole Joe Walsh running for president thing is really tacky)

>Deep Purple - Made In Japan
I think you mean Last Concern In Japan.

I almost listed this. The This Time Around version was a magnificent improvement.

The Rolling Stones really don't do live albums very well (except for Ya-yas), but they do do them often. Plus there's too much repetition between albums.

10cc doesn't do them well either because they go to extremes to duplicate the studio versions, without the slightest deviation. What's the point? (They do re-invent a few songs though.) The Eagles are guilty of playing the "studio version live" as well. They might as well just lip-sync.

I liked Wings Over America at the time, but McCartney's live albums since seem to rely on Beatles tunes as selling points.

Queen's are good, but you have to be a fan and know the songs well.

>Deep Purple - Made In Japan
I think you mean Last Concern In Japan.- Todd

Actually, I meant Last Concert In Japan