Should Live Call It Quits?, Is it time? Options

[Hoodstock]

I am a huge Live fan. I have enjoyed every CD (except V, which I can't even listen to except for Simple Creed) but I'm finding that the band has lost originality. I tried making a CD of my favorite songs recently and had trouble placing songs in order since every song is about love or includes water in it in some way. I miss the fun songs like Waitress and Shit Towne, they are lacking from newer live CD's. Instead we get songs that include earth elements, are about love over and over again, and sorry attempts to protest the war in some way. I would appreciate a new live CD that did not include songs about love, and had nothing to do with water (streams, rivers, ect.) or the sun, and did not mention the war (those songs especially never even seem to be very good at all) (p.s. I am not stating this as any type of comment on the war). Unless Ed can come up with lyrics on original topics that are radio worthy in the U.S., or that make me want to turn up Live and rock my speakers again , maybe live should hang up their hat and do greatest hits tours ever so often.

The newer Live seems stale and old before I even replay the CD.

[GvB]

Sherocker: lingual it's easy indeed, but....
Try to listen to it with your heart and soul and try to feel and live that way....
Will it still be too easy for you?

And (to almost everybody): screaming out (REAL) anger more intense then singing in a warm and tender (and also REAL) way about love, how is that?

Diane: I have listened to BoP again, because I thought already that I had not discovered everything.
But then I listened to "Sanctity of dreams".
It's in "Paint a moustache on the Mona Lisa, drive a Harley through the heart of danger".
I always thought that it was: do something you don't dare and dare to live on the edge.
But I discovered something new, or something I was forgotten.
It is: dare to differ from other people, dare to be strange.

About the lyrics: I don't agree with you in that the Lyrics did not matter in their older albums.
They are just different.
In "Mental Jewelry", "Throwing Copper" and "Secret Samadhi" the lyrics were about what is wrong in this world and what people did wrong to Ed and later on also about Ed's own mistakes (except from Lightning Crashes which is about the magic of life and dead and I alone which is on loving yourself, I thought).

In "The Distance To Here" Ed finds out what should happen to improve himself as a person and that it is possible to improve the world a very little if you are prepared to improve yourself (become more loving, for example).
This album is one of my favorites although it had to grow on me because it was the first whole Live album I listened to and it was at that time quiet difficult to take in the spiritual way.
Later on I bought and started to listen to the other albums.

Then it goes wrong between most people and Ed (and then I just started to really love it!).
Live comes op with "V".
Ed begins to explain what he has learned and tries to motivate other people to become more loving to the world and each other and less cynical.
He does that in easy sounding language in the hope that the whole world will understand.
But too bad for him, most people seem to like it better if you keep on to explain what is wrong and that it hurts and that the end of the world is near.
The music has become softer, which fits better with the new message.
Meanwhile fans started to complain.

Then BoP and the worst nightmare of the older kind of Live fans came true: Eddie becomes a daddy!
And even "worse", he starts to sing about it!
But what is more beautiful then a parent who loves his child?
I don't know what it's like to be a mother, but I guess it's hard but beautiful!
Since almost two years I'm an aunt of a beatiful cousin and I love him and for him (and all other children and all other people) I will try to keep on doing my little things to help to improve the world a little.
And he sings about the love for his wife (what's wrong with these things).
And Ed keeps singing to motivate people to help him to improve the world.
And that brings him new fans, but the 'old' ones hate it.

But Ed doesn't give it up and I guess that it's okay to the other Live members (Live comes up with Songs From Black Mountain).
And he keeps telling about love and hope and tell's his children that "Love shines" (I hope that he doesn't mind that other people try to give that message to other children too and even to teenagers and adults too).
But (fortunately) he still worries about the world and comes up with "Home".
He sings the verses from the perspective of the soldier and in the chorus he is Ed again and asks from out his heart "when they comin' home?"
He doesn't sing that only as a worried man but as a father too.
And he gives (in my opinion) an fantastic advice in "Wings": the advice to turn all your bagage (the weight that lays on your shoulders = pain and other difficulties) into something positive (could be the "Wings" that carry you home= the tools that help you to feel better inside yourself).
A lot of fans seem to get and like that one.
But sadly a lot of fans reject the rest because of a lack of raw vocals and rough guitars....

(Maybe a funny thought: try to imagine Ed screaming to his daughters that love shines, together with the sound of loud electric guitars.....I guess his daughters become terrified and would flee into a closet or under a table and never dare to get out of the closet or get away from under the table again!)

That's what I think about it all.


GvB.