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

alpitt wrote:

Public Affection's 'Death of a Dictionary' is actually not bad, not bad at all. It's got that mid-late 80's feel to it which gives it some charm.

Has it been released on cd?

throwing copper = one of the most underrated & underappreciated albums around.

great album.

Yes! Two of my favorite rock albums from the 90's. Secret Samahdi was good. After that, not so much. I've seen them play live 3x though and were great every time.

SS was the first album that i ever blew me away. it will always be something special to me, oh the freakin memories with that one.

but then i found pj and i had a new favorite band! tdth wasnt bad but after that, i lost interest and fast.

but their first 3 (and even doad) where great, great albums. i also have had a hard time listening to them lately cause of their recent stuff. i havent even listened to SS in so long.

I loved Live in high school, loved Throwing Copper and saw them when they toured in the summer of '95 (with PJ Harvey and Veruca Salt!). After that, I saw them two more times on 2 separate tours and bought Secret Samadhi, The Distance to Here, and V.

These days, my appreciation for them has waned. I still have Throwing Copper (and I still like it, for the most part), but I've gotten rid of the other albums (I did burn the tracks I liked onto a CD). Listening to Secret Samadhi again, I hate some of the lyrics: "Angel, don't you have some bagels in my oven?" "Everybody's here, this puke stinks like beer".

Jeremy1012 wrote:

I don't know anything about their other music so I don't know if they have any better material but listening to Throwing Copper was one of the more unpleasant musical experiences I've had. I really don't see what sets it apart from other mid-to-late 90s post-grunge rock music like Creed.

Better singer, better songs. What's more, Live have been a band for as long as say Pearl Jam, thus their sound was formed long before Creed and all the cash-in bands came about.

they are more 'spirital' (is that the word?) than most of the 90's stuff. and i think the rem connection is a fair one. and musical it is very simple. during SS chad said in some interview that it was the first time he really had to play solos, it was something to that effect. try listening to throwing copper again, but not comparing it to pj or nirvana or any of those other 90's angst bands. his lyric style is very different than what was happening then, he didnt base his lyrics off his bad childhood of being from a broken family or drug addiction.

PearlJamaholic wrote:

they are more 'spirital' (is that the word?) than most of the 90's stuff. and i think the rem connection is a fair one. and musical it is very simple. during SS chad said in some interview that it was the first time he really had to play solos, it was something to that effect. try listening to throwing copper again, but not comparing it to pj or nirvana or any of those other 90's angst bands. his lyric style is very different than what was happening then, he didnt base his lyrics off his bad childhood of being from a broken family or drug addiction.

I got from the lyrics that they were trying to be spiritual but it just came off sounding cheesy and self-conscious.

Jeremy1012 wrote:

Oh I'm sure, I'm not saying they were cashing in, I'm just appraising the music I've heard as I heard it. It didn't really stand out to me. The guy's voice was obviously not taking the Scott Stapp "Vedder with lockjaw" route, it's more of a Michael Stipe kind of thing but it was kind of annoying and the lyrics seemed so try-hard and self-consciously serious.

I'm surprised that lyrical content bothers you, given that you enjoy a band like Fall Out Boy . Sure, some of the lyrics are clumsy, but then he was only about 23 when he wrote them, and there is some decent stuff on there like White Discussion. I think The Dam At Otter Creek is an amazing way to open an album too.

Jeremy1012 wrote:

Lightning Crashes doesn't have anywhere near enough happening musically to sustain my interest long enough to appreciate what I'm sure was meant to be a powerful song, lyrically speaking.

Hmm, I find that curious considering that you listen to stuff like God Speed You Black Emperor, whose songs often take longer than the entire running time of Lightning crashes before they build up to anything more than a couple of notes repeated over and over. Now don't get me wrong, I quite like some of their stuff, but they are a band who require patience, so I find it hard to understand how your interest wanes before it gets to the great big soaring finale of Lightning Crashes.

Jeremy1012 wrote:

I've just heard people talking about what a powerful and deep record it is and I was taken aback when I first heard it by how utterly bland it was, in my opinion of course. Are their earlier/later albums any different or is the band's sound just not for me, judging by my previous comments?

See I can understand where you are coming from, Throwing Copper definitely sounds like a product of its time, but no more so than Ten does, and I certainly understand why you would throw them in with all the other post-grunge stuff. But, a bit like I've said to you before with regards to Radiohead's The Bends, you have to remember what the musical landscape was like at the time of its release. It's easy to compare it to all the post-grunge stuff that was released after it, because there have been 14 years worth of imitators and grunge clones since then. But at the time, Throwing Copper was just as original as anything else out there in the mainstream. I guess for me there is quite a lot of nostalgia attached to the record, so perhaps I tend to gloss over any flaws. That being said, I still think it has a shit load of really strong and memorable melodies.

I doubt there is anything much I can say or suggest that might make you like them, some of the stuff on Secret Samadhi is a bit darker, musically speaking, but some of the lyrics are just plain awful!

facepollution wrote:

I'm surprised that lyrical content bothers you, given that you enjoy a band like Fall Out Boy . Sure, some of the lyrics are clumsy, but then he was only about 23 when he wrote them, and there is some decent stuff on there like White Discussion. I think The Dam At Otter Creek is an amazing way to open an album too.



Hmm, I find that curious considering that you listen to stuff like God Speed You Black Emperor, whose songs often take longer than the entire running time of Lightning crashes before they build up to anything more than a couple of notes repeated over and over. Now don't get me wrong, I quite like some of their stuff, but they are a band who require patience, so I find it hard to understand how your interest wanes before it gets to the great big soaring finale of Lightning Crashes.



See I can understand where you are coming from, Throwing Copper definitely sounds like a product of its time, but no more so than Ten does, and I certainly understand why you would throw them in with all the other post-grunge stuff. But, a bit like I've said to you before with regards to Radiohead's The Bends, you have to remember what the musical landscape was like at the time of its release. It's easy to compare it to all the post-grunge stuff that was released after it, because there have been 14 years worth of imitators and grunge clones since then. But at the time, Throwing Copper was just as original as anything else out there in the mainstream. I guess for me there is quite a lot of nostalgia attached to the record, so perhaps I tend to gloss over any flaws. That being said, I still think it has a shit load of really strong and memorable melodies.

I doubt there is anything much I can say or suggest that might make you like them, some of the stuff on Secret Samadhi is a bit darker, musically speaking, but some of the lyrics are just plain awful!

I dunno, the pathos in GY!BE never seems forced to me. A 25 minute track with minimal instrumentation can sustain my attention perfectly if it hits my buttons in the right way but a 4 minute one can fail miserably if it doesn't. Lightning Crashes is like that for me.

When you bring up the Fall Out Boy thing, you kind of miss the point I couldn't give a toss about lyrics if they aren't supposed to be good, there's nothing wrong with meaningless lyrics used to back up a catchy tune, but Live seem to put a great deal of emphasis on the lyrics and for me, they don't hold up. It seems like they're trying too hard to sound philosophical and "deep". A lyric like "pale blue colored iris, presents the circle
and puts the glory out to hide" just sounds like bad teenage poetry. I recognise it, I've written enough of it in the past and would feel embarrassed to put it out on a record I'd much rather a band was careless with their lyrics than tried too hard and just drew attention to how silly some of them are.