Now that most of you have had and listened to this album for a few weeks now, what is your impression of it?

This poll is not to be mistaken with the original one. At the time that poll was created, many of you voted indifference because most of you had not digested the album as a whole yet.

I actually initially voted that I was indifferent to it but now I hate it for sure.

So go ahead, tell me and your fellow Live fans how you really feel about Ed's first solo studio effort.

How about adding a third option....it's alright.

while i cant honestly say i hate it by any measure, i sure as hell cant say i love it...it has its moments

Basically, I stopped listening to it after I gave it a few tries.

The album is full of songs with a melody and chorus that make it sound like a Rick Springfield album from the 1980's - but about loving Jesus instead of some girl.

The lyrics remind me of the poems I was forced to write in second grade English class. Those forced verses where I was trying to draw on my simple second grade concepts and find words that rhyme. But half the lyrics don't even fit within the metering of the songs - resulting in people accidentally thinking that he is singing about a child asleep at the wheel.

Ed is playing near me with his band and I am not at all interested in going.

I just don't care about this album anymore.

Meanwhile, I listen to the 3 or 4 tracks from TGF that I have heard, and the other tracks that I can hear from the Fat Daddy bootlegs, and I can literally feel the hair growing on my chest and my gonads getting larger.


Here's the difference between Ed and TGF. It is plain and simple:

Alive sounds like it was written by a lyricist and a vocalist, and the songs were pushed from the "top down", for lack of a better word. The music just backs up the featured vocals. None of the instruments get their own place or purpose in the songs. I mean, can you imagine T.B.D. getting written by Ed now, the way he writes songs. That bass line makes the song. You need the bassist in the songwriting process, to put all the pieces together. The top down approach makes the songs uninteresting and uninspired. That is what the last 2 Live albums sounded like. And it sounds like it did not originate from some deep creative well as an artistic expression of music that Ed wanted to make. Rather, it sounds like it was aimed to hit a specific commercial target. It was aimed to sound popular and catchy and to appeal to a target audience. It sounds like Ed trying to be like Daughtry. Or Christian Rock. Or Kings of Leon. Or Katie Perry. It sounds like Ed was trying to make music that is what people want to hear and music is funny that way - I can't tell you how I can tell when music is organic and when it is contrived, but I can tell.

TGF sounds like it was written by a drummer, and guitarist, a bassist, and a singer - together. It sounds like it came from the "bottom up". Like the way old Live used to sound. The four parts - drums, bass, guitars and vocals/lyrics, all work together and are compatable and support each other. Each has it's own purpose and owns part of the songs. And it sounds like music that was sitting deep within the souls of the members of this band, waiting to be found, dusted off, polished, nurtured and shown to the world. It sounds organic. It doesn't sound like they made something for people to like. They made something that came from inside them, and they hope people like what they did.

Bravo Fish, bravo. ALways well written and indisputable!!

Great post fish! You're spot on. I just wish Ed thought more about the sound in a broader aspect than just himself. What stops him from going "ok I have this really cool bass riff in mind to feature heavily in this song!". He doesn't, it's all about him. You can say that's fair enough now that he's solo, but that doesn't mean neglecting the other instruments he doesn't play. No one would think less of him if he'd written in a really kick ass bass line for example. This just stems from one or 2 reasons. Pure ego where only he may feature. Or he just doesn't have the ability to write in place of a whole band. I think it's a bit of both and it really damages the end result. Alive like Fish said is just written from the top down and the top isn't even that good. Then again what do I know, he was the driving force behind Live after all!

I like it and probably enjoy it more now than when I first heard it. Is it as original as what TGF album is going to be? No and I was never expecting it to be. Ed is into writing 3-4 minute pop/rock songs now, whereas TGF spent almost a year trying to perfect their songs. 1 guy making a pop-rock record vs. 5 guys making a rock album...the rock album is going to be more original 9 out of 10 times.

Honestly (and I have no proof, this is just my opinion), I don't think Ed likes the whole recording process anymore which is why since 'V' we have heard how short Live's studio time was. Maybe it goes back to TDTH which I remember Ed saying (and Chad may have talked about it in his blog too...can't remember) that that album took a lot of him. He personally invested a lot of himself into that album, emotionally and creatively and maybe he doesn't want to do that anymore. I think right now with a family, he's more into creating songs for enjoyment not necessarily ones that are the most creative or have some universal/deep/serious meaning. And I think that's fine. Would I like if Ed took some time to make his songs more "interesting" musically? Absolutely. But I can enjoy what his music for what it is (not to say I'll like everything).

Which album? I honestly don't even know where I've got the damn CD. I hate it so much that I listened to the entire album twice and listened to Soul Whispers about a dozen times. After that I had enough of it.

I gave T.B.D. as an example of a song that wouldn't be the same if someone wasn't thinking about the bass while the song was being written.

Here are a few more examples off the top of my head. I can't get Crying Time out of my head. I am going to repost something that I wrote over at TheGraciousFans.com about Crying Time:



So there is a song that has all of the pieces working together, and the pieces become greater than the sum of the parts. It's music. Crying Time wouldn't work without that bass line going:

Doo, doo, doo, dooo, doo
Doo, doo, doo, dooo, doo
Doo, doo, doo, dooo, doo
Doo, doo, doo, dooo, doo

All the way through the song. I can't get that bass out of my head.

Honest Man starts with that attention grabbing guitar solo. Ed's songs wouldn't start with that. It would have to start with an Oooh oooh. Think about the Lakini's Juice riff too. That's the work of art in that song. The lyrics are just the frame.

Think about the drums in Mother Earth If a Vicious Crowd. That song would be nothing without the apocolyptic sound of those drums.

Think about the bass in Negation and that U2-like screaming guitar toward the end of Negation when the song breaks loose.

Think about how the drums and the guitar and the bass in Good Pain herald the turning point of the song. It works hand-in-hand with the lyrics and the message of the song. All of the pieces fit together to make music. Right at the part where the lyrics declare an enlightenment and a realization of the teachings of Krishnamurti, Ed says, don't you know now "I'll never be the same again... no more bitter sweet, no more good pain...." Then Ed screams "HEY!!" and those drums start slamming: "Ratt, tat tat... Rat, tat, tat!" and the tempo picks up and the bass and the guitar go nuts. This is a turning point in the song and it is brought on by the music. The lyrics go from stating "he said.. he said" to Ed screaming the realities of these teachings in the first person. "So many of us stand in the middle, looking back to the worst, looking forward to the fall".

This is what you get when a whole band of great musicians work together to create songs together. Each bringing his talents into the room. Each adding to the song.

The result is better than what you get when the singer brings pre-baked songs to a bunch of session musicians and asks them to just take it out of the box, and warm it up in the oven at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.

This goes to the very issue of the lawsuit and the decline in Live's music and why Ed was wrong to push the other three out of the songwriting process and why Ed is wrong to say that the other three are not songwriters in any meaningful respect and who was responsible for making Live great and who was responsible for causing Live to die! It took all 4 guys to make Live! Ed isn't Live without the other three, and TGF isn't Live without Ed.

This post has been edited by FishOutaWater: Aug 30 2010, 12:15 pm

I must admit, I spun Alive pretty much in the underground on my way to work. After the fourth listen I knew it by heart and now it has been a couple of weeks since it is gone from both of my mp3 players and mobile, giving way to a pretty poor recording of a TGF gig and the songs we have.

Hey Fishy, if you ever fancy a blow job - I'm game for ya. You ever-correct fuck.

Ha Ha!!!!! I just spit coffee all over my desk. That killed me!

I feel like I just keep stating the obvious. I'm probably beating a dead horse, over and over again.

This post has been edited by FishOutaWater: Aug 30 2010, 12:23 pm

You maybe are stating the obvious, Fish, but you do it in a very artistic and heartful way. Thanks for that!

But it's true though. Like I've said before, the big difference is the music from TGF envokes imagery. It creates little film clips in my head. I've said before that Honest Man is hard times in Belfast Northern Ireland, Tredecim is the ocean and storms with rising waves and a dead beach. There's a picture of a somber looking beach on the inside of Rammstein's "sehnsucht" album cover that for some reason comes to mind. TGF make me think these things. When I hear Eds music I just see him with a big goofy smile and that's about it. It just doesn't evoke imagery. There's no substance to the music itself. If you removed Eds vocals and made them karaoke tracks then you'd have some really bland stuff.