Happy birthday Secret Samadhi! Options

[swami]

For those of you who got it on the release day back in 1997, tell your story. I did, but I'm busy watching Philadelphia right now

[kingparamecium]

So I guess hardcore fans and casuals alike got hung up on not being able to separate SS from Throwing Copper.

It's understandable, every band has that one album that everything gets compared to. (Not to change subject but Swami, as a fellow DM fan I'm sure you're used to everything being compared to Violator.)

Why are people unable to separate a body of work from the ghost of another body of work? Those of us who are consumers and have never made or released a popular album in a band, is it because we expect the band set out to match, top, or mimic the previous blockbuster album? Surely bands don't start writing lyrics or music with the mindset "We gotta make this better than the last one or at the very least just as good."

This isn't an inflammatory rant, I'm just a lifelong fan, lifelong lurker since illout, but seldom poster. I've missed out on a lot of interacting with fellow Live fans.

Was it our youth that, on release day, expected SS to be TC or beyond? Did we not have the cognition to think that a band of human 20 year olds might not have had the formula to completely recreate lightning in a bottle? What ABOUT TC did we want completely recreated?

I wonder also about the casual audience. Were the singles not "love song"-y enough? Was it there was no I Alone?

Honestly, all these years later I'm tired of Throwing Copper. It's exhausting that, even if Live had managed to continue making solid albums, these hypothetical works would still get held up to TC. Great album, but seriously, how many times can you listen to it 30 years later and wish every other album was also TC?