Live - The Distance to Here - CD Review by Gail Worley

I once had a lover who was in the habit of playing Live's Mental Jewelry while we had sex. When we broke up, I couldn't listen to that album for about two years. In retrospect, this was by leaps and bounds an exponentially greater tragedy than the loss of our relationship. Imagine going two whole years without hearing "Pain Lies on the Riverside." What a shame.

My favorite Live song is their first hit single, "Operation Spirit." In the song, Ed Kowalcyzk, Live's lead vocalist, sings the line "I heard a lot of talk about this Jesus," which gave many people the impression that Live is a Christian band. Live is not a Christian band. Live is a spiritual band. Huge difference.

The first article I got published in a New York City newspaper was a self-indulgent little acid ramble on an idea I had at the time that the internet acts as a quickening agent for bringing together those with a shared past life karma. I called the piece Millennium Approaches: Operation Spirit, because I liked the way the chorus of the song, "Let's get it back together," exemplified the point of the story. That article is way too embarrassing for me to read now, but the title still kicks total new-age ass.

Ed Kowalcyzk started losing his hair around the time the band's second record, the multi-platinum-selling Throwing Copper, was released in 1996. He was about 25 or 26, I think. Finding himself follicle-y challenged, Ed did what any self-respecting man would do: he shaved his head. I couldn't have cared less. Watching the video for "I, Alone" on MTV, it didn't matter if Ed was bald and had a serious five o'clock shadow. When he sang "I alone love you/I alone tempt you" I just wanted to slam him.

Ed Kowalcyzk is sexy as hell. Chicks dig a rock and roll messiah, even a reluctant one.

I've attended more concerts by Live than any other big name act I've yet been obsessed with seeing perform (those bands being Queen, Peter Gabriel and Nine Inch Nails). Actually, I've seen Marilyn Manson more, but that was mostly by accident. By the time New Year's Eve approaches, I will have seen Live four times in 1999 alone. Ed is like a pop star version of Jesus, holding his audience in thrall, as they feel compelled to compete for his affection. When he's up there on stage, ripping off his shirt and going on about love and truth and stuff, he makes me scream like a school girl. I sing along with all their songs, even the one about the placenta falling on the floor, and when they play "Operation Spirit" I get really excited, so you'd better just get out of my way.

Throwing Copper spawned three or four hit singles, turned the band into a household name, put them on the cover of Rolling Stone as the biggest band in the world and made them all millionaires. My personal favorite song from that album -- and it's hard to pick just one because they're all so fabulous -- is "Waitress." In a song about remembering to tip your waitress, even when "She was a bitch," I get seriously misty -- I swear to god-- when Ed sings "We all get the flu/we all get AIDS/we've got to stick together/After all, everybody's good enough/for some change." Then, for emphasis, he adds "Some fucking chay-yay-ange." I love it when Ed says the word "Fuck." What a great song.

Secret Samadhi -- a deeply personal musical journey on which Ed weaves the essence of his various spiritual pursuits (even the title, Samadhi, refers to a state of meditation) into songs about Freaks and Gods – was released in 1997. Nobody really got the point. Fans and critics wanted to know where "Lighting Crashes Part Two" was. The band, Ed especially, found themselves on the receiving end of a lot of shit. Everyone wished for this weird, non-rocking Live album to go quietly away and hoped that the band would come back to Earth from their empire of cloud very soon. I don’t really have a problem with the record, but that’s just me.

Secret Samadhi sold over three million copies.

Live just released their fourth album, The Distance to Here. The Zen koan- like title -- What is the sound of one hand clapping? What is the distance to here? -- is something the individual fan can ponder and find unique meaning in. The record itself is like a wild vine; it grows on you. While I didn't feel the songs jump out and distinguish themselves the first time I played it, The Distance to Here is now firmly entrenched as one of my top ten albums of the year. Every time I listen to it, I uncover some new gem. I love how Patrick Dalheimer lifts the bassline from Blue Oyster Cult's "Godzilla" on "Sparkle." I love Chad Taylor's lead solo on "Meltdown" and the amazing guitar landscape he builds on "Where Fishes Go," which I think is definitely some of the best work Chad's ever done. I love his slinky, languorous intro to "Voodoo Lady" and I love it when Ed sings "Light up a cigarette, she said/And calm the fuck down." And it really rocks me that The Distance to Here ends with a love song -- Live's first official love song -- "Dance With You." Talk about some crazy-intense love lyrics: "The goddess finally sleeps/in the lap of her lover." Swoon. Ed's wife is the luckiest woman in the world.

I recently got to talk to Ed Kowalcyzk on the phone and he was a really cool guy. I asked him what he thinks Live have accomplished on The Distance to Here. "It seems that we've been able to find a place in ourselves that is comfortable being Live and there's a tremendous energy," he said. "At the same time, there is a tremendous peace and strength in the band right now. I think that the urgency of our earlier records is back, but with better songs. I think the better songs part comes from the fact that we did allow ourselves to experiment and grow on Secret Samadhi and to really push ourselves with songs like "Lakini's Juice." You have songs on The Distance to Here, like "Where Fishes Go" and "Voodoo Lady" and "The Distance" which are really new for Live; totally different approaches to arrangement and style."

Before we hung up, Ed told me that he’d worked really hard, on this record in particular, to make his lyrics universal and to have the whole world be able to hear these songs and find something in there for themselves. "I think it's so important, at this moment in history, that people begin to see the similarities between things rather than the differences." If you can just get past the record's one teeny tiny flaw, the super cheesy title of "The Dolphin's Cry" (great song, cheesy title) and throw down $17.98 for The Distance to Here, you will be getting a life-affirming entertainment experience above and beyond what you pay for. The millennium approaches; let’s get it back together.

Email Gail Worley

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