Chad Taylor's blog! Options

[Merica]

Not the ending I wished for

There have been tons of crazy rumors surrounding the hiatus of LIVE. I have read quite a few and laughed at the extremely creative imaginations of our fans. I’ve been reluctant to fan the flames but the rumors are getting further away from the truth and I will try to set the record straight from my standpoint.


First and foremost, Ed has every legal right to perform the songs he helped birth while being the front man for LIVE. The copyrights for these songs are owned by Chad Gracey, Patrick Dahlheimer, Ed Kowlalczyk and myself. Ed does not control the catalog but rather the bands publishing company, Black Coffee Publishing, Inc. Black Coffee is a majority rule corporation.


Yes, it is true, there was a hidden publishing contract singed in 2005. I personally discovered it via a communication breakdown. Ed is listed as the only signature. When I wrote him to find some resolution to the situation, he failed to respond. I have left these matters to our attorneys who will no doubt file a complaint. Honestly, I don’t care about the financial/legal outcome of these matters, the proof is on the page. Ed was able to stab his three best friends from middle school in the back. This act was far down the line from typical rock star ego. As you can imagine I am deeply hurt and wounded.


In light of these matter, I can’t ever see myself working with Ed, let alone ever being in the same room with him. LIVE was always about the band, when Ed lost sight of that in favor of his own ambitions and goals, our considerable fans base began to sigh a collective yawn.


As band mates and friends and despite the lack of fresh material we continued to support Ed with all of our integrity. The final blow was Ed’s request for a $100,000 “lead singer bonus” to perform as surprise guests at this years Pink Pop Festival. I was informed of his request by our management and politely told them to “fuck off.”


Ed will no longer be the vocalist for the band LIVE. At this point in time, we have made no official plans to replace him but it is clear that he is no friend of mine or the lifelong fans of LIVE.


I have focused my energy on creating new music with The Gracious Few. I look forward to seeing many LIVE fans in the audience at our shows. Patrick, Chad and I have made a pledge to honor our long shared history with the fans of LIVE. You will always be graciously welcome in our house.


Love


Chad Taylor

Ho... lee.... shit.

[FishOutaWater]

I predict that there will be no response to all of this from Ed. Ed is too smart to address this with the potential of litigation hanging out there.

I don't know if I have reacted too quickly or over reacted to this. But I have had a creepy uncomfortable feeling about The EK for a while now. Does anyone else get a creepy feeling from Ed changing his identity to "The EK" and all of those video blogs with him waving his eybrows up and down and saying "hey this is the EK here" and saying "peace" with some sort of fake urban slang, and taking his shirt off, and using his cutesy funny urban slang voice in the acoustic shows and swooning over coffee and canolis and posting video of him singing into the camera and singing with a bunch of chicks playing the vioin backstage, and video of him signing his stick figures, and pimping his pendant and coffee in between LOLs and promoting his Christian beliefs and fixating on Zion and belief and water constantly, and selling Amazon.com merchandise through internet store links which provide him monetary kickbacks for the click-throughs, and selling his own downloads of recordings of him playing Live songs and The EK quoting the bible and religious leaders constantly?

Sorry, man. But that whole thing creeps me out. And it leaves me feeling dissallusioned.

I let myself look up to him as an inspiration, as if he was somehow better than me or farther along the spiritual path or more informed, because he seemed to devote his life and his art to those spiritual pursuits while I spend most of my time at a day job. So I followed along and gave consideration to his path, as if I let him do the heavy lifting with his time and effort and creative inspiration and I could learn from him. I looked into Krishnamurti and Big Mind and Ken Wilber and found it all interesting and I learned something from all of those sources. In the end, I think that the distillation of the message in Mental Jewelry and Throwing Copper are the basic and simple truth about life. That was the beginning of Ed's path. The path that Ed was on was supposed to lead him to someplace more enlightened and awakened. And he ended up in belief-oriented Christianity, pimping "merch" and self-promoting into a computer camera and on Twitter for the almighty dollar.

The world has too many dissapointing public figures who turn out to be frauds. But Live and Ed had me convinced that they wouldn't end in a fashion that would be on the front page of a tabloid if the world and the commercial public cared more about them (like if they were U2 or something). Live was on to something so big early in their lifetimes. As a band they started as childhood friends from rural Pennsylvania who wrote Mental Jewelry, an album that was a masterpiece that belied the number of years they spent on this earth and went well way beyond their experience as musicians. They followed that up with an equally brilliant and over-achieving Throwing Copper. They pledged that they were undying personal friends. Bands like that shouldn't end like this. I took it for granted that they never would. I kind of expected that I would get the unparalleled joy of seeing them play on stage for many years to come. That makes it a bigger bummer than just some band whose music I liked having broken up.