Sophomore Slump

Music Discussion Question #3
** Note: I've recently been listening to "Dig Me Out," a podcast devoted entirely to 1990's rock music, and it's giving me some serious nostalgia. I had no idea until recently that it was possible to find an hour-long discussion of The Rentals' debut album on the internet. This article is inspired by the podcast, specifically an episode about "Disappearing Acts," which the hosts define as bands that experienced great success for a short period of time, followed by a rapid decline in popularity. If you have any interest in the subject, you should check out the episode, and really, the podcast in general. **

The question: Which new album purchase left you the most disappointed?

In the height of the CD era, before Youtube and illegal downloading, CD's were going for like $16 to $18 a pop. So it was important to be sure you were going to like the album before you bought it. Nothing was worse than the sinking feeling, after two or three tracks, that you had just wasted almost twenty bucks on an album you probably wouldn't listen to again.

It took me some time to admit it, but Live's album "Secret Samadhi" was the first album ever to give me this feeling.

It's easy to forget now the popularity of Live during the 1990's. Their big hit songs - "Selling the Drama," "I Alone," and especially "Lightning Crashes" - were all over rock radio. Everyone I knew owned their breakthrough album "Throwing Copper," which I still think is a fantastic rock album, full of catchy hooks, interesting, enigmatic lyrics and varied dynamics. I remember going to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland in, I think, spring of 1999, and watching a highlight reel on the history of rock. It covered just about everything chronologically: Chuck Berry, Elvis, the Beatles, Zeppelin, up through the Grunge Era. The last band on the montage was Live. And their inclusion, following all of those other great acts, confirmed what a lot of people believed at the time: they would inevitably inherit the title of Best Rock Band in the World.

Obviously, this was not to be. In 2002, just a short time later, I bought tickets to see Live at a relatively small venue in Columbus, Ohio, and I had trouble finding anyone to go with. "No thanks," said one of my friends, "I'd rather not drive an hour to see some washed up band from the 90's."

I'm not entirely sure why the end for Live came so suddenly. The guys on the Podcast theorize that, while they were played to death on mainstream radio, they never really had the fan base of a Pearl Jam or a Dave Matthews Band, and so when the radio stopped playing their songs, the band quickly faded from memory. That makes sense to me, but certainly, they didn't do themselves any favors with their lackluster third album.

Easily the most 90's band photo you'll see today.

In 1997, Live followed up "Throwing Copper" with "Secret Samadhi." It wasn't completely terrible. There are a handful of good songs - "Rattlesnake," "Lakini's Juice," and... actually, i guess that's about it. But the album was marked by a series of forgettable, mid-tempo songs, some absolutely cringey lyrics (first line: "Let's go hang out in a mall"??), and, overall, a painfully pretentious vibe. I listened to it plenty of times anyway, as if in an attempt to convince myself to like it. But "Throwing Copper" it was not. And its only major hit, "Lakini's Juice" (Who is Lakini? Why is his or her juice important? Got me.) kind of came and went without much fanfare.

Back to those lyrics, for a moment. Some lowlights included:

"I can smell your armpits"
"You stole my idea/This puke stinks like beer"
"If the mother goes to sleep with you/Will you run and tell Geraldo?"
"I rushed the lady's room/Took the water from the toilet."
"Angel, don't you have some bagels in my oven?"

And so on. Maybe we shouldn't have been totally surprised. This was the band whose biggest hit had crowds of people singing about a placenta falling to the floor.

Some years later, Live put out "The Distance to Here," which actually wasn't bad. And they followed that one with "Five," which was. I think they put out another one after that, but by then, I had stopped paying attention.

The failure of "Secret Samadhi" continues to bother me more than it should, and not just because it was a waste of $16. I think the bigger heartbreak was that it more or less meant that one of my favorites bands, the one that seemed most destined for legend status, would effectively fail to survive the decade. My parents came of age at the same time as some of the best bands in history - The Beatles, The Stones, The Who. In 1996, when I watched Live perform at Garden State Arts Center, I thought I was seeing a legend in the making. Instead, it turned out I was seeing a footnote - or maybe even a punchline.

What does this album title even mean? Part of Live's downfall had to be their pretentious fascination with Eastern imagery.

Postscript: Three years ago, Live's frontman Ed Kowalczyk marked the twentieth anniversary of "Throwing Copper" with a series of shows, in which the setlist was the entire album, played on acoustic guitar. Once again, I had trouble finding anyone to go with, and was basically resigned to skipping it. But on the night of Ed's show in Harrisburg, I found myself sitting at home with no plans and made the spontaneous decision to drive up and buy a ticket. (When I called beforehand, the box office representative happily told me that tickets were still available for "Ed Kowalski.") I was surprised how much the show moved me. After not really having listened to it in ten years, I got actual goosebumps from "Lightening Crashes." if Live never did anything else, they made an album that still got under my skin, twenty years after I first heard it. That's more than most bands can do.