**The OFFICIAL Live Mental Jewelry/Throwing Copper appreciation thread**

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  • Jeremy1012
    Jeremy1012 Posts: 7,170
    facepollution wrote:
    Well whether Lightning Crashes caters to your particular tastes is kind of irrelevant, it's an enduring song that has stood the test of time, which would indicate that it is a well crafted song, at least in the traditional sense. I don't quite understand your need to rationalise or intellectualise your response to the song, other than saying you just don't like it. You said there wasn't enough 'happening' to sustain your interest, indicating that you would require more in order to increase your interest - which seems quite contradictory of your appraisal of GYBE......
    Well in terms of what is supposed to be the hook of the song, in Lightning Crashes, I'm assuming it's the vocal melody and lyrics. The chordal backing is fairly bland, repetative and uninteresting in my opinion. Now the same COULD be said of a particularly extended and minimalistic section of a GY!BE track but that part would inevitably be the focus of the track, not lyrics or a vocal melody, being instrumental and all, and it's likely that, whether misguided or not, an extended, minimalistic section of a GY!BE track was supposed to be that way. For ME, the musical aspect of Throwing Copper, and that song in particular, was lacking, although I'm sure for some it does the job just fine, and I had to look to the lyrics for something that might appeal to me, and when I went there I couldn't understand for the life of me why it is considered by some to be a classic 90s rock song.

    I'm not so much trying to rationalise of intellectualise my response to the song as find out why others feel differently. I'll be the first to admit that I don't understand how anyone WOULD like it. There are bands and songs that I don't enjoy that I can appreciate objectively but Live don't seem to be one of them :o
    facepollution wrote:

    I don't think I missed the point at all - I'm sure Pete Wentz (I'm sure I remember reading that he wrote most of the songs?) takes his lyrics quite seriously, for the most part. Just becasue you or I might deem them to be meaningless doesn't mean that is how they were intended.

    That line you quoted might seem like bad teenage poetry to you, but perhaps you might be misinterpreting it? Who knows? I actually find the chorus of the song to be pretty powerful. Its lyrics are simple, but I can totally identify with the emotion being conveyed. To me the song always dealt with the harsh reality of life, in that, as one life ends another begins - which I think can be a hard thing to deal with when the life ending is that of a loved one, and the new life is that of a stranger you will probably never know.

    I can honestly say I doubt a single FOB lyric has ever been written without tongue planted firmly in cheek, often irritatingly so, but I guess that's just opinion :)

    It's not that I'm misinterpreting that lyric, I'm in favour of lyrical ambiguity so even if I didn't understand it, it doesn't mean I couldn't appreciate it. Maybe too much studying of poetry is making me analyse too deeply but the construction is clunky and the metaphor is cryptic for the sake of it. THAT'S what I find grates a bit. I can handle "deep" lyrics and I can handle meaningless lyrics but I'm not big on those that make out to be deep when they aren't. It seems to me that maybe Live's quest to highlight some kind of spiritual significance in their lyrics would be better served by not trying so hard and going with honest simplicity. Whether I dislike them or not, they seem like a pretty genuine, earnest, heart-on-sleeve band and I think most of my problem with the lyrical content of Throwing Copper lay with feeling slightly patronised. Not to Bono levels but at times, not far off :p
    "I remember one night at Muzdalifa with nothing but the sky overhead, I lay awake amid sleeping Muslim brothers and I learned that pilgrims from every land — every colour, and class, and rank; high officials and the beggar alike — all snored in the same language"
  • facepollution
    facepollution Posts: 6,834
    Jeremy1012 wrote:
    There are bands and songs that I don't enjoy that I can appreciate objectively but Live don't seem to be one of them :o

    Well I think we got to the crux of the matter then!
    Jeremy1012 wrote:
    It's not that I'm misinterpreting that lyric, I'm in favour of lyrical ambiguity so even if I didn't understand it, it doesn't mean I couldn't appreciate it. Maybe too much studying of poetry is making me analyse too deeply but the construction is clunky and the metaphor is cryptic for the sake of it. THAT'S what I find grates a bit.

    I don't think the metaphor is particularly cryptic at all, considering he talk about the angel opening her eyes a number of times in the song - the angel is the baby, or new life, thus the "pale blue colored iris presents the circle, puts the glory out to hide" is him saying that seeing this baby's eyes kind of hammers home the whole circle of life idea.
    Jeremy1012 wrote:
    I can handle "deep" lyrics and I can handle meaningless lyrics but I'm not big on those that make out to be deep when they aren't. It seems to me that maybe Live's quest to highlight some kind of spiritual significance in their lyrics would be better served by not trying so hard and going with honest simplicity. Whether I dislike them or not, they seem like a pretty genuine, earnest, heart-on-sleeve band and I think most of my problem with the lyrical content of Throwing Copper lay with feeling slightly patronised. Not to Bono levels but at times, not far off :p

    I don't actually think the song is supposed to be spiritual at all, you might get that from the word angel, but I think he's just trying to highlight the innocence and perfection of a baby. Do you even know what the song is about? In Ed Kowalczyk's own words:

    From Spin Magazine: (Ed Kowalczyk) He smiles, exhales, and begins. "I wrote 'Lightning Crashes' on an acoustic guitar in my brother's bedroom shortly before I had moved out of my parents' house and gotten my first place of my own." Kowalczyk says that the video for "Lightning Crashes" lends itself to many misinterpretations of the song's intent. "While the clip is shot in a home environment, I envisioned it taking place in a hospital, where all these simultaneous deaths and births are going on, one family mourning the loss of a woman while a screaming baby emerges from a young mother in another room. Nobody's dying in the act of childbirth, as some viewers think. What you're seeing is actually a happy ending based on a kind of transference of life. The dedication to Barbara Lewis came after the song was written. But it was something that we hoped would honor the memory of a girl we grew up with and help her family cope with sorrow -- which it seems to have accomplished -- in a fashion in keeping with the theme of the song."

    It's funny, because I think you could make the judegments you are making of any number of other Live songs, but I just don't think they fit Lightning Crashes.
  • HermanBloom
    HermanBloom Posts: 1,764
    Love their first four album

    Huge for me growing up
    SLC 11/2/95, Park City 6/21/98, Boise 11/3/00, Seattle 12/9/02, Vancouver 5/30/03, Gorge 9/1/05, Vancouver 9/2/05, Gorge 7/22/06, Gorge 7/23/06, Camden I 6/19/08, MSG I 6/24/08, MSG II 6/25/08, Hartford 6/27/08, Mansfield II 6/30/08; Eddie Albany 6/8/09, 6/9/09; Philly 10/30/09, 10/31/09; Boston 5/17/10
    I thought the world...Turns out the world thought me
  • Riverrunner
    Riverrunner Posts: 2,419
    Throwing Copper was one of my favorite albums for a long, long time. Don't listen to it much anymore. TC was the first album I bought by Live. Then I bought the follow-up album, but can't remember the name of it now. The song "Dolphin Cries" was on it. At least I think that was the name of it.

    We saw them at the Fox Theatre in St. Louis once. It was an awesome concert.
    The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals. Ghandi
  • facepollution
    facepollution Posts: 6,834
    Riverrunner wrote:
    Throwing Copper was one of my favorite albums for a long, long time. Don't listen to it much anymore. TC was the first album I bought by Live. Then I bought the follow-up album, but can't remember the name of it now. The song "Dolphin Cries" was on it. At least I think that was the name of it.

    We saw them at the Fox Theatre in St. Louis once. It was an awesome concert.

    The Dolphin's Cry is from The Distance To Here which came out after Secret Samadhi (the album after Throwing Copper). I actually quite like The Distance To Here - some pretty solid stuff on there.
  • Riverrunner
    Riverrunner Posts: 2,419
    facepollution wrote:
    The Dolphin's Cry is from The Distance To Here which came out after Secret Samadhi (the album after Throwing Copper). I actually quite like The Distance To Here - some pretty solid stuff on there.

    Thanks for the clarification. I am at work and my CD's are at home. Also, I lost all my music on my hard drives (external) a few months ago - both of them! I plugged them into a new Belkin hub and pop! Something went wrong - terribly wrong, now I can't get to anything on those external hard drives!

    Anyway, I did like the Distance to Here but I never listened to it like I did Throwing Copper.
    The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals. Ghandi
  • facepollution
    facepollution Posts: 6,834
    Riverrunner wrote:
    Thanks for the clarification. I am at work and my CD's are at home. Also, I lost all my music on my hard drives (external) a few months ago - both of them! I plugged them into a new Belkin hub and pop! Something went wrong - terribly wrong, now I can't get to anything on those external hard drives!

    Anyway, I did like the Distance to Here but I never listened to it like I did Throwing Copper.

    Ah man does that suck! Damn computers!

    Yeah I kind of moved on a bit from Live by the time TDTH came out so didn't listen to it quite as much as I did Throwing Copper which I played endlessly for pretty much a whole year!

    I think the thing that drew me in to Throwing Copper was more the vibe of the music, I love albums where all the songs fit together perfectly, and I think Throwing Copper does that amazingly well.

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