I Own That CD! - Live

Coming at the time when alt-rock was at its peak (mid-90s), Live established themselves as one of the biggest acts, without an overwhelming amount of fanfare. Following up on the general success of their first album, the band released one of the biggest releases of the alt-rock era with Throwing Copper. The band from York, Pennsylvania (where I went to college) had hit the big time and Throwing Copper is today’s feature on I Own That CD!

The CD is powerful in every way possible. The music is louder and well produced by ex-Talking Head Jerry Harrison and lead singer Ed Kowalczyk wrote deep, meaningful lyrics while belting them out, matching the power of the music. Just a few years before, Kowalczyk discovered the writings of Indian spiritualist Jiddu Krishnamurti, whose philosophy of living life from a place of selflessness and humility influenced the singer’s songwriting process, as well as the band’s creative philosophy.

The songs were accessible and fit so well into the alternative music scene - The lyrics mashed the abstract and spiritualism, alongside the sentimental while the music was absolutely dynamic and catchy, using the quiet-loud formula.

Favorites include “Selling the Drama”, “Stage” and “Shit Town” (sorry York). The two biggest tracks that received a ton of airplay and video play on MTV were “Lightning Crashes” and “I Alone”.

Lyrically, “Lightning Crashes” is a meditation on the cycle of life, death, and reincarnation. Kowalczyk’s vision of the song was a hospital emergency room where people died and babies were born, a never-ending transference of life energy.

Kowlczyk describes “I Alone” this way - “It really is almost two songs: there’s an intimacy and a sort of meditative quality to the lyric of the verses, but then it opens up into something like a love song in the chorus. I didn’t really mean it like that, I wanted the chorus to be a bigger statement about love – universal love.

The CD is still great to listen to - It’s lyrics could fit into 2022 guitar-based rock and it remains an under appreciated release to me (even though it did quite well in sales - over 8 million).

Side note about the band - Having gone to college in York and worked at my college radio station, I was already familiar with the band, originally known as Public Affection. Proud to have helped ever so slightly with getting their music out there for the masses to hear.

So take another listen to Throwing Copper. Remind yourself what you loved about rock music in the mid-90s and if you want to borrow my CD, let me know.