Defend the Indefensible: Live (the band)

hey, no problem at all and no offense taken ... i'm resigned to a lifetime of having people mangle my unpronounceable/unspellable last name :-)

i forgot about "lakini's juice" -- that song was OK. other than that, i'm hard pressed to think of anything else that would redeem this band.

I also want to say that I liked their first ep and album a bunch in high school, even though when I heard it recently I was cringing at many of the lyrics (lots of blunt desert storm references).

I should also mention, in my own meager defense, that mostly Live makes me laugh and shake my head. The pretentious and drippy singer has said some of the more stupid things I have ever heard coming out of a pop singer's mouth in public. Several years ago, the band was playing some free-Tibet event that was sponsored by Reebok, and during the obligatory MTV (or MTV-esque) stand-up interview, the intrepid journalist asked him what Live fans could do to help the situation in Tibet. His answer was, more or less, "Well, they should buy Reeboks to support companies that see the importance of this issue." I'm paraphrasing, but I'm not making this up. If he was kidding, he's a fuckhead, and if he was sincere, then he's a superfuckhead.

Also, I always had heard the Live guys were kind of tools, but a guy I know who worked backstage on one of their shows at his school corrected me. He said they were "cocks."

live was actually my first concert, age 13/14 with my dad, saw them several years later in a shitty club in Raleigh, NC, then four (!) times opening for the counting crows back when i was dating a girl obsessed with the latter.

i can defend some of mental jewelry (esp. beauty of gray and the mirror song), most of throwing copper (even pillar of davidson, i can't help it, when they played that song in Raleigh i felt like i was in the middle of a Promise Keepers convention, and I strangely enjoyed it), Lakini's Juice is definitely still worthy, and yes Dolphin's Cry is OK (not just for laughs) - haven't heard a thing off the last two albums though, and don't plan to.

band's defining moment : the playing of "dam at otter creek" during a particularly harrowing desert scene in the pauly shore vehicle "in the army now"

My sister and me would always count the number of times Ed K touches his head in the "I Alone" video. It was tricky cuz sometimes it would like he was about to and then he'd change his mind. I think he wasn't used to been entirely shorn yet.

They were awful.

this is totally hilarious.

In addition to a few mentioned here, "TBD" (for Tibetan Book of the Dead, yes, pretentious) was an OK song. And their MTV Unplugged wasn't that bad.

X-post - I saw them once (and apparently this happens at all the shows) but the audience always claps along to Lightning Crashes, and because it's such a slow song they inevitably get off beat, and the result is a hilarious arythmic jumble.

i read it for 10 mins, after which i gave up.
then i realised that i have 3 albums on cd by LIVE.
2 of which i dont think i have ever actually listened to all the way to the end.

(to be clear, I’m not shading you for posting it… just surprised RS would go so deep on this subject)

when tricky played on Conan a couple of years ago, Ed Kowalcyxisbf, Live's singer, sang with tricky. he was dressed like a hippy and had a bandana on to hide his balding scalp (he actually had long hair at the time). although the entire performance was horrendous, Ed kept trying to really get into the song, and he was doing this extremely awkward dance and just generally looked like a weenus. i was lucky enough to have caught it on tape (i was expecting tricky to be much better) and every time i watch this tape a can't help but laugh my ass off. i guess that's a defense.

Had to look this one up. Thank you, YouTubes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-eNS8lMltk

...he pleaded no contest to felony criminal trespass, felony theft by deception, two counts of felony forgery, misdemeanor stalking, and misdemeanor simple assault, Hynes has been held under house arrest at Live’s former corporate headquarters in York, Pennsylvania

“That ended my creativity in the band,” says Taylor, still pained by the memory. “I felt like a married couple where someone says, ‘I’m no longer going to have sex with you. But we’ll stay married.’ It was one of the saddest moments of my life.”

These guys sound more dysfunctional than Fleetwood Mac.

...he was also willing to fund Taylor’s new band, the Gracious Few — an alt-rock supergroup of sorts featuring Dahlheimer, Candlebox singer Kevin Martin, and Candlebox guitarist Sean Hennesy.

Why couldn't they just call it Candlebox II?

Soon, though, the band members had to figure out other ways to supplement their income. Taylor tried producing movies, like the 2010 Ernest Borgnine-Cybill Shepherd film Another Harvest Moon

“At first I was like, ‘fiber optics?’ ” says Taylor. “ ‘We barely know anything about real estate, let alone fiber.’ ” But Hynes had an idea to lay down a fiber-optic cable that ran directly from New York to Ashburn, Virginia, bypassing the big cities along the I-95 corridor where Verizon and others ran their cables. “I know this sounds weird, but I was like, ‘OK, that sounds like a great idea,’ ” Taylor says. “Somebody said we went from throwing copper to laying cable.”

Taylor isn’t broke to the point where he can’t afford his own bison burger, but he’s grateful for the love.

Why couldn't they just call it Candlebox II?

They probably couldn't use the name (which also comes up in the Live intra-band disputes).

Kind of off-topic, but I recently watched the Go-Gos documentary – I didn't realize how super dysfunctional and shitty to each other that band was in its heyday. Hard feelings over songwriting credits (and, accordingly, publishing $$ split) was a big part of it (which also comes up in the Live thing). It makes me appreciate how smart (and fairly unusual?) it was for R.E.M. to split all their songs evenly, from the beginning.

We park and walk into Redeux Vintage, an upscale vintage clothing store where a Billy Joel T-shirt from the Storm Front tour will set you back $75. In the early Nineties, this was Live’s rehearsal space. He points to a corner. “Ed wrote ‘Lightning Crashes’ right here,” he says. “And I wrote ‘Dam at Otter Creek’ right over there. It all happened right in this space.”

And the Go-Go's collaborated with each other on songs in all kinds of combinations. By the third (and best) album Kathy Valentine and Gina Schock contributed first-rate stuff.

Kind of off-topic, but I recently watched the Go-Gos documentary – I didn't realize how super dysfunctional and shitty to each other that band was in its heyday. Hard feelings over songwriting credits (and, accordingly, publishing $$ split) was a big part of it (which also comes up in the Live thing).

And even then, the Go-Go's doc didn't get into most of the legal fighting - zero mention of the God Bless the Go-Go's reunion album (with some outside songwriters) and the insane legal fighting where at least every member of the band was trying to be fired by the other four.

I saw a recent-ish TV interview with the Go-Gos where Carlisle said something to the effect that one month they'd all be suing each other, and then the next month four of them would be planning a surprise birthday party for the fifth one.

It was startling to learn that Charlotte Caffey had a serious heroin addiction for years, and the other members (by their own admission) didn’t really give much of an f? Sounded like the new bassist had to interrupt a South American tour and physically haul her back to CA for rehab, to save her life.

(I read afterward that Belinda was also an addict, for decades… I didn’t realize the band’s story was so dark.)

couldn't help lolling at this - the rest is just sad

the Reading Outlet Center, which they bought for $1 million in 2011 with plans to renovate it as an apartment and retail complex. The building later collapsed.

When I first saw the New Radicals I assumed it was Live due to his baldness

incredible article, i really enjoyed that

same! what a clusterfuck

lol I had to hear abt this from Ned on FB because I would not have opened this thread otherwqis

You could probably do a whole series of sadness on these 90s type bands from second hand stories I have heard that was in the orbits of Saliva, Days of the New and Kenny Wayne Shepard let alone the more public melt downs.

Behind the scenes, however, the band was falling apart. Taylor says Kowalczyk insisted on taking the lion’s share of the publishing money since he was writing most of the songs, causing tension between him and Taylor that never truly went away. On Live’s next album, in 1999, Taylor says, the singer went further, telling the band he would write the songs entirely by himself, using them as mere support musicians. “That ended my creativity in the band,” says Taylor, still pained by the memory. “I felt like a married couple where someone says, ‘I’m no longer going to have sex with you. But we’ll stay married.’ It was one of the saddest moments of my life.”

a The McLennon Thread: what were The Beatles really about? (evidence presented for consideration) moment

i am 99% sure i have never heard "Lightning Crashes" until right now, as it plays on youtube as i type this. "I Alone", that one i heard a lot.

there's a thread for you now that you've heard it, KM

LIGHTNING CRASHES,

loooooool, thank you neanderthal!

https://i1354.photobucket.com/albums/q686/tinyservants/Screenshot2013-02-04at82712PM_zpsb3e4f4c1.png