Greatest LIVE Songs?

[regularwill]

I've spent the last few days sorting out my collection and came up with a fun group project! We take each album tracklist (with a few obvious exemptions) and make a live album of THE BEST performance of each song. Anyone else down?

UPDATE
RULES
- Quality must be A to soundboard
- Copy this setlist below and write which live performance is your pick.
- All lists will be compared with the most listed live version to be the final pick.
- If another list has a version of a song you like better than your original pick, you may change your song to that version.
- Please do not discriminate someone for their choice, unless it's for a valid reason.
- Only one song shall be used from a concert.

00. Intro
01. Buried Alive By Love
02. Wings Of A Butterfly
03. Kiss Of Dawn
04. Pretending
05. Resurrection
06. Your Sweet 666
07. Vampire Heart
08. HeartKiller
09. Right Here In My Arms
10. It's All Tears
11. All Lips Go Blue
12. In Joy And Sorrow
13. The Sacrament
14. Razorblade Kiss
15. Sleepwalking Past Hope
16. Killing Loneliness
17. Wicked Game
18. Bury Me Deep Inside Your Heart
19. Beyond Redemption
20. Scared To Death
21. Join Me (In Death)
--Encore--
22. Rebel Yell
23. Funeral Of Hearts

[616]

For me, the best live performance of Pretending is from Madrid 2001!

[regularwill]

That is indeed a good choice!  My favorite performance of Death Is In Love With Us would have to be Ermal Festival 2000.  I'd say in order to make this work, we set some guidelines.

Post one song per reply.
If you agree on another reply, like that reply.
If you disagree, suggest your favorite.
Once there is enough to cover an album, we share the final tracklist with the community.

As long as this is fine with the moderators.  I just figure since Helldone isn't making much of a buzz this year, we make our own!

[Politex]

Gone With The Sin - Rock AM Ring 2001

[616]

Gone With The Sin - Rock AM Ring 2001

Gone With The Sin is better from Turku 2002

but it will be difficult as we are limited to chose from certain collections but you need to consider that i can have like hundred of bootlegs more than someone else and i can pick a song that you had no idea that the bootleg even existed , for example right here i think Turku 2002 is better version than Rock AM Ring 2001 version but Gone With The Sin from Bratislava 2015 is awesome as well Ville sang it like an angel - but there is no soundboard of it , i am saying just because of my recordings.... do you know what i wanna say with that?
we should set some rules - because another think they performed a lot of songs when they were younger and it could be like 4 CDs of greatest lives....
And should we pick only soundboard or even amateur recordings? And the result will be mix of different sources, different quality and it could take a lot of time if i wanted to enhanced and remastered it to sound properly......

I would say that : lets pick like the GREATEST live songs - they have 8 albums, a lot of singles and a lot of gigs ,  as its a FAN project - lets make a poll with everything that will be picked and we will make it to ONE CD-R so only limited number of songs will make it on the final tracklist and it will be all made by poll so the songs that will have most votes - i will make the poll afterwards , lets just convince other members to participate on that , its a nice idea and when the poll will be there we should add links to listen to the chosen songs so people can listen before voting.

so far we have to the poll:
Pretending Madrid 2001 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUM_jlaqehs
Gone With The Sin Rock Am Ring 2001 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBgw7OB_zdg
Death Is In Love With Us Ermal festival 2000 - http://we.tl/rxWLR4b6yE
Gone With the Sin Turku 2002 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-OQLSv0Hk4

[regularwill]

Gone With The Sin - Rock AM Ring 2001

A hard choice but I'm gonna have to go with this one. Rock AM Ring is one of my favorite shows despite Ville's lack of enthusiasm for DS&BH songs.

[regularwill]

Gone With The Sin - Rock AM Ring 2001

Gone With The Sin is better from Turku 2002

but it will be difficult as we are limited to chose from certain collections but you need to consider that i can have like hundred of bootlegs more than someone else and i can pick a song that you had no idea that the bootleg even existed , for example right here i think Turku 2002 is better version than Rock AM Ring 2001 version but Gone With The Sin from Bratislava 2015 is awesome as well Ville sang it like an angel - but there is no soundboard of it , i am saying just because of my recordings.... do you know what i wanna say with that?
we should set some rules - because another think they performed a lot of songs when they were younger and it could be like 4 CDs of greatest lives....
And should we pick only soundboard or even amateur recordings? And the result will be mix of different sources, different quality and it could take a lot of time if i wanted to enhanced and remastered it to sound properly......

I would say that : lets pick like the GREATEST live songs - they have 8 albums, a lot of singles and a lot of gigs ,  as its a FAN project - lets make a poll with everything that will be picked and we will make it to ONE CD-R so only limited number of songs will make it on the final tracklist and it will be all made by poll so the songs that will have most votes - i will make the poll afterwards , lets just convince other members to participate on that , its a nice idea and when the poll will be there we should add links to listen to the chosen songs so people can listen before voting.

so far we have to the poll:
Pretending Madrid 2001 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUM_jlaqehs
Gone With The Sin Rock Am Ring 2001 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBgw7OB_zdg
Death Is In Love With Us Ermal festival 2000 - http://we.tl/rxWLR4b6yE
Gone With the Sin Turku 2002 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-OQLSv0Hk4

I agree to an extent. The best part about this is for collectors to dig in the archives and for new fans to hear a few gems. I would suggest soundboard or recordings that can be enhanced to A quality so we have a compilation that sounds like it should be an official release. On another note, I think that with their extensive catalog, this should at least be a 2 CD. We could split it from GLS to LM and ALSN to TOT but this can be up for suggestions. I'm personally hoping that "rare" songs will make the cut so my next pick is going to be....
One Last Time Rock Im Park 2001.
https://youtu.be/w5bofzvTd7c

[AcousticFuneral]

For me, the best live performance of Pretending is from Madrid 2001!

I can go with that although I prefer this one from Tavastia 2003
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AVKQ9Qnlw3A

I want to throw Bury Me Deep from Rockpalast 2000 into the mix too.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FXJP3AMH2Gs

[Peter Forge]

umh...very good question....for me is definietly The Funeral Of Hearts from Digital Versatile Doom....I have a lot a memories for this song and version from DVD is still best for me...so sentimental. The second position is Pretending from Turku 2002...wich is strange because I hate Pretending until last year

[616]

Tavastia 2003 is useless , Ville was so drunk he was off key mostly

[666WTLOnVinylFTW]

Tavastia '03 is one of the best HIM gigs ever.

[616]

@ Cory : i agree that it has a great sound, great setlist, but Ville was mostly off key, if you are not deaf you must hear it . i agree it was a great gig , awesome gig but not 100% from Ville that makes it hard for me to accept that putting something off key into "greatest" of our band....

i also like Scared to Death from BBC Sessions 2010
Beyond Redeption from Semifinal 2003 definitely- the raw sound of the guitar and bass is splendid!
Its All Tears from VIVA OVERDRIVE 1998
Funeral Of Hearts from Hammerstein 2005
?

[666WTLOnVinylFTW]

The Funeral Of Hearts - Taubertal Festival 2003 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkGHBrmTmBU

That entire gig is great, another one of my personal favorites. Really any of the songs from it could make sense on a compilation like this.

[616]

yeah Taubertal 2003 is one of the greatest, Ville drunk and high on cocaine but awesome, RHIMA from Taubertal is a must on that Greatest list
its a shame that we dont have a full Taubertal 2003 bootleg

also Turku 2002 is one of the greatest gigs ever

this compilation could be the mix of few gigs really

Your Sweet 666 from Jyrki 2001 is awesome version

[Politex]

If we can't create each album live, we could create one setlist with 20~23 songs.

[616]

If we can't create each album live, we could create one setlist with 20~23 songs.

yeah its gonna be so difficult to complete this , i mean its a great idea, but they performed some songs 1 time, some songs few times, some never, some every gig and its gonna be so ridiculous to fight over what to put on it, because one will wanna give the best that means something to him and one will wanna add some other and both will be great .....
i have so many songs from so many different bootlegs on my mind right now, it would be like 10 CD box to put them all on it....
if we wanted to make the greatest of each album we would have been in trouble as they never did a lot of songs and for example they did You Are The One few times but we have only lousy source so it wont make it on the list

it could be like song : all versions that can be picked and one separate poll for the song, but it would be hundred polls ....

Or everyone could make their own 20 greatest live and we would compare and if there will be any matching - these would be picked and the rest could go on to the poll ....

[AcousticFuneral]

Strange world will be a struggle from Helldone 2012 just picking the least shit one

[regularwill]

For me, the best live performance of Pretending is from Madrid 2001!

I can go with that although I prefer this one from Tavastia 2003
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AVKQ9Qnlw3A

I want to throw Bury Me Deep from Rockpalast 2000 into the mix too.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FXJP3AMH2Gs

As much as i love the Dope Danny intro, Ville is very off in this performance

[Kaysa]

As the baby fan that I am, I'm not exactly in a position to suggest something for this compilation but I love the idea!

I'd say, let's sacrifice the rarer played songs if there aren't any good bootlegs available instead of including shitty sources.

I'm excited and I hope this works out, it would be such a great thing to have!

[regularwill]

As the baby fan that I am, I'm not exactly in a position to suggest something for this compilation but I love the idea!
 
I'd say, let's sacrifice the rarer played songs if there aren't any good bootlegs available instead of including shitty sources.

I'm excited and I hope this works out, it would be such a great thing to have!

All fans should participate in our fun event! As a new fan you may end up bringing in something the older ones would overlook.

Yeah, if it's not a quality recording, it shouldn't be listed.

@616 can we share this to Facebook to get more people on this? I'm sure there's people in the street teams and collector pages that would love to participate.

[Lujja]

My suggestions of the songs that I remember:

- Lose You Tonight (2003/04 versions... I can't remember the best soundboard option... probably Taubernal or Tavastia 2003).
- Our Diabolikal Rapture (Any 1998 or 2000 version)
- The Beginning Of The End (Any version... I can remember Kelo 97, Ilosaarirock 98 or Provinssirock 99)
- The Path (Hamburg 03)
- Love's Requiem (Webster Hall 2014)
- This Fortress Of Tears (Taubernal 2003)
- Rebel Yell (Lumnezia 2008... or any old version like Kelo Club 97, Provinssirock 99, etc)
- Sleepwalking Past Hope (Orpheum theater 2007)
- Hand of Doom (Turku 2002)
- Right Here In My Arms (Ruisrock 2001)
- In Joy And Sorrow (Emsdetten 2001)
- Death is in love with us (New Pop Fest or Provinssirock 2000)
- Larger than Life + Don't Shake Me Lucifer (Gurten Festival 2000)
- Poison Girl (Any from Deep Shadows era... Luxembourg 2001?)
- All For You + RHIMA (Paris 2000)
- Black Sabbath (Can't remember, there are a very good versions on their 2006/07 tours... Greece 2006, Lycabettus 2007, etc... but my favourite is from The Docks, Canada 2006 with Frozen as intro)
- And of course... any version of "You Suffer" 


Sorry if I forgot some song... and sorry if it's a very long list xD

[616]

@volcom_sk83r  : and how it should work? how do you imagine it? You will copy the link to this forum or you will write down the idea?
it would be nice if some new members came if they wanna participate on that

still i dont know what rules are on this project? we should make some rules and we need to take fact that most of the fans will know only a little of the live versions , HIM community is not so bootleg oriented last 10 years and most of the fans will know a little of Rockpalast, Rock am Rings and that kind of live stuff so....
i doubt someone will know the version of The Funeral of Hearts from Hammerstein Ballroom 2005 or Gone with the sin version from Bratislava 2015 gig (as i keep the bootleg uncirculated).....

i mean ok people will write down the most known video proshot versions of some live songs of the most known songs (join me from rockpalast, heartache from rock am ring, wicked game from digital versatile doom).... and we will have a list of dozens of the songs in the list , what next? what key to select the greatest songs?

I see a lot of trouble in here, for example there is One last time live from Rock Im Park 2001 listed, this is just an example - me personally i like this live version , its rare it was only performed few times in 2001 and its a rarity, that leads me to a question is it the greatest of HIM live when it was performed only few times? probably not if they retired it after few tries and we have not much to compare it to other versions as there is almost identical version from Rock am Ring 2001 and there is absolutely low terrible version from Switzerland 2001 amateur recording which is like just a noise
and as their setlist is mostly static, based on the same overplayed songs, we have not so many songs to pick from , do we?

another problem is that everyone loves different songs so its normal that i love Resurrection and i will try to push some live version of this song to the final tracklist, and others will do the same, does it mean that the version is the GREATEST of HIM live? Probably not again. So should it be picked from most played songs like Wicked Game, Join Me, Rhima, BABL, ROTWOAB, PG, KISS of Dawn, Soul on Fire, YOur Sweet 666, Funeral ,WLAdE  only? ....... Or they did some song once so tadaa it is automatically the best version of it live as there are no other versions ..... and we chose some rarely played song and other fans can say that its hardly the greatest of HIM live when it was performed only few times 18 years ago.....

next problem could be that some fan can love some version because Ville was super hot shirtless on the video and that can be an avalanche on some fans, they will convince themselves that yeah that is the greatest live version because Ville was shirtless and so super hot, no matter how the version actually is and that song can get the most votes as lets face the facts that HIM fans are mostly girls..... and what then if there sill be some random bullshit pick with most votes only because of Shirtless Ville on the video... ridiculous

another thing is that i could have bigger bootleg collection than 99% of all HIM fans - fair? No. So i can pick whatever great version of the songs that are on te bootlegs that might be still uncirculated and unknown to the internet and all the fans - fair? No. That could be that the version would not end up on the final tracklist anyway as its not meant to the public. Fair? No, definitey not.

I would suggest that we have bootlegs from 1997 - 2010 and 2012 - 2015 - it is 18 live years - lets pick one song from every year (ok we have just one proper bootleg from 1997 and its amateur source....) and we dont have a 2015 soundboard (that might be another problem - fans keep their recordings for themselves so what we can pick 2015 from? I could provide something from my Bratislava 2015 recording from my camera source but will i do that ? why if there is not said that there is something greatest from this particular gig?....) ...

i am pretty much interested how this project will go...

[Politex]

I have some ideas for the rules

- Only quality A or more (means probably close to only soundboard or really good recordings, we can be more sensitive for older stuff in this rule)
- 20~23 songs forming a realistic setlist (a setlist that Ville can look at and say "it's possible to play it", so no songs that were only played 1~2 times, and we would need to include wicked game, butterfly etc... those songs we "hate".) This way we will be fighting less for which songs to use or not.

One quick example of my personal choice:
00. Intro
01. Buried Alive By Love
02. Butterfly
03. Kiss Of Dawn
04. Pretending
05. Resurrection
06. Your Sweet 666
07. Vampire Heart
08. HeartKiller
09. It's All Tears
10. Hearts At War/Into The Night/Tears On Tape/All Lips Go Blue
11. In Joy And Sorrow
12. The Sacrament
13. Razorblade Kiss
14. Sleepwalking In Past Hope
15. Killing Loneliness
16. Wicked Game
17. Bury Me Deep Inside Your Heart
18. Beyond Redemption
19. Under The Rose
20. Join Me (In Death)
--Encore--
21. Gone With The Sin
22. Right Here In My Arms
23. Funeral Of Hearts (Venus Doom Outro)

And if we follow like that we could do a "b-side" with only rare songs performance (like 5~6 different song).
But I don't know if it would be fun doing that way.

Edit: I like the idea of one song per year, but I don't know if we have material for it...

[regularwill]

@616 you bring up some good points. There are a lot of kinks to work out in this before we can really get this started. This should be a fun project but not a frustrating one that may cause arguements amongst us. I believe we can do this and make everyone happy with what we make.

 For quality control, A quality songs only. This means soundboard or quality amateur recordings that have an even instument mix. While there may be a version that has an amazing drum solo, if the bass blows out the mix, its useless. Minimal audience noise for the amateur recordings as well. No one wants a recording of Bob coughing every five seconds or the friendly group talking throughout the recording.

For fairness, only songs that are available to the community or songs that whoever posts it are willing to share. If it is a song from a Youtube clip, post the link to the individual song or a link to the concert with the start time of the song you like. In the final mix one of us with the bootleg will put it in for better quality.  If it is a song that is not easily available and you would like to share it, then do so. Otherwise, we can't including a song that only four people have heard.

It's true there are only three or four versions of One Last Time to pick from. There's also hundreds of versions of Wicked Game. We could do one with songs that have been a staple in a few tours. We follow the guidelines above and if this goes well, we do another with the rare cuts.

Since this is a community project, I'm sure if we have a large enough group, we can have valid points on why one recording is better than the other.

[Kaysa]

I'm. So. Fucking. Angry. Right. Now. I'm actually trembling. (Imagine an angry chihuahua if you want to.)

You're complaining that people don't know many bootlegs and mention in the same sentence that you keep (some of) yours uncirculated. Can you spot a connection between those two things?
Yes, I know, there are still many bootlegs available, I just wanted to point out that you can't complain about people not knowing something you keep a secret. Keeping something uncirculated means that only few people know it. By definition.

What's your problem with people only knowing the most popular live versions? If you have a better solution, tell people and don't just sit in your corner complaining no one's mentioning them.
If there aren't any good versions of certain songs, they just won't make it. Nobody's keeping you from listening to them, you know? Since there are songs that were never performed live, there will be some missing anyway.

People do have opinions. Different ones, even, and let's go another step further and say people have individual opinions. It happens. We're trying to find a couple of performances of songs that are generally liked best, obviously we won't find the track list that is everyone's absolute favorite. And there's nothing wrong with that, this is what you have to deal with when working together with other people.
We're not calculating how the perfect bootleg collection CD has to look like. That's impossible. This doesn't have to be The Greatest of HIM to every single person inhabiting this planet.

(Now comes the point you're all waiting for, I know.)
If I read an implication that involves the general femalehood, Ville, and the inability of said femalehood to make rational decisions one more time, I'm not going to hold my impulse back and smash the closest object in my vicinity into the face of the next person I happen to be meeting.
Being female and being able to focus on sound quality rather than visuals are not mutually exclusive. (Shocking, I know.) That said, there are bootlegs without video, who would have thought, maybe we should focus on those? That would keep us females from frying our brains during the execution of this project.
(I'm kidding, just saying.)

If you don't want to share your recording, fine, don't. It's your personal right and all that. But stop mentioning it all the time then. And stop complaining that the community is shit and everyone's egoistic.


Now that I'm done venting I will continue to browse my gallery of hot shirtless guys. I hope I won't ruin my list of Ville's hottest performences with all the drool.

Seriously though, try to be a bit less pessimistic, this is depressing.