If Live Returned To Their Roots for the Next Album..., ...What "Roots" Should They Return To? Options

[edstipe]

This is purely hypothetical, because there is nothing to indicate that Live would ever try to return to any of their old styles again.

However, I have heard some discussion on this board in the past about Live returning to their "roots," and it got me thinking about what specific roots I would most like to see Live return to. Clearly, their first four albums were incredibly different stylistically from one to the next, so it would be hard to pinpoint any specific "style" of the band's early albums.

So, out of the four albums listed, which style would you most like to see Live return to someday?

(By the way, I cut it off with Secret Samadhi because, although I think TDTH is brilliant, I feel that it is their first record that is more a blending of previous styles than a new style altogether.)

[Wambangalang]

I'd rather think of "returning to their roots" as meaning a return to their approach to writing music than a return to a particular sound. The albums listed in this poll are so great because they were so different sonically, not because one returned to the sound of the one before it. But im more interested in the mentality that crafted the lyrics in those earlier albums as oppsed to now.

I know its been said to death, but at least based on the interviews he gives these days, ed seems comfortable with it all. The guy has a good life, nice house, wife, kids etc. I think just recently he said something along the lines of 'you cant change the world but you can work on yourself' , which is a far cry from the guy who was once hell bent on saving the world. It does sound stupidly ambitious, but thats the kind of mentality that produces inspired work, and to want to change the world you have to be angry about the state of the world. You dont have to be political to be angry about the wars that are still raging in this day and age, the mass poverty around the world, the starvation, the misery, the cyclone that killed 80,000 poor people in burma the other day. Even if your kids are provided for and live in a decent neighbourhood there is a shit world out there for them to one day inherit.

The music doesnt have to be angry at all, but its from that realisation about the state of the world that ed set about to change it (Its in their mission statement that someone posted a short while ago). Mental Jewlrey didnt work. The world is still shit. and surely thats gotta motivate you, especially as an artist, to passionately do something about it. Again. (take that as a hint as to my vote)

There is nothing wrong with wanting to touch people with uplifting melodies about love and what can be achieved when you devote yourself to truth. Its all there in krishnamurti's literature. Its from his writings that the artist ed was born, and it is only natural that the progression of live's work has resulted in what we have now; a live that is past the developmental stage of how to change the world, and is now at a point where it is the very result of that action. Like in 2001 a space oddessy. They begin as apes, gathering and pounding bones. Then they transform into intelligent beings who traverse the galexy with tremendous technological capability. And finally, the evolution into a supreme being, the baby in the womb, floating through space.

Live is the baby floating through space. Unfortunaltey, they have left the rest of us behind. Some of us are still apes pounding each other with bones. For live to connect, they need to start at the beginning and try again to take us with them. Ed is a great artist and i cant see that someone who wrote all that brilliant material a lifetime ago somehow hasnt got it in him to reach that depth again.

im stoned by the way