Liveage!

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Liveage! is the Descendents’ first live album, released in 1987 by SST Records. It was recorded on July 13, 1987 at First Avenue in Minneapolis during their FinALL tour, when singer Milo Aukerman left the band to study biochemistry. Afterward, the group planned to relaunch as All with a new singer, though Aukerman would later reunite with the Descendents in 1995.

The album captures the band’s live sound and includes many of their popular songs. It was recorded by Metro Mobile Location Recording and engineered by Timothy Powell, Mark Harder, and the band’s manager Matt Rector. The album was mastered at Third Wave Recording in Torrance, California by Richard Andrews, with Bill Stevenson producing. The liner illustration, by bassist Karl Alvarez, shows guitarist Stephen Egerton with wild eyes and a wide grin wearing a spiked crown; this image was later adapted into All’s mascot Allroy.

Liveage! was released as an 18-track LP and a 20-track cassette and CD; the latter two formats included two extra tracks, “Sour Grapes” and “Pervert.” The title comes from song titles in which the band added the suffix “-age” to words (for example, Myage, Tonyage, Bikeage, Cameage).

Two years later the band released Hallraker: Live! (1989), a second live album with an entirely different set of songs, recorded partly at the same Minneapolis show and partly at a Berkeley show earlier. The band described Hallraker as the “other” live Descendents LP, created to give fans a fuller picture of their live material.

Reception was mixed to positive. Allmusic gave Liveage! 3 out of 5 stars, calling it a strong, best-of-style live collection of hits. Rolling Stone praised its strong song selection but noted the band didn’t change their live setup much, suggesting the album is mainly for dedicated fans.