A Live experience Options

[Pokey]

Ok so it's 2am on a Friday night, I've had quite a few beers and I'm lying in bed, lights out in pitch black with my headphones on listening to Secret Samadhi full blast. I'm suddenly transported back to a 12yr old when this album was released and my dad took me to my first concert. Even with my eyes open I can't see anything. I just am flooded with amazing memories, literally sitting on the edge of my seat as the first chords of rattlesnake are struck in Rod Laver Arena as my musical heros took the stage. The guys that until then were just sound coming through speakers, there they were, real people in the flesh! And I was lucky enough to see what is still one of the most amazing shows I've seen. Most 12yr olds didn't have a clue who Live were, Coolio and I dunno, Chumbawamba were probably the things most of my friends were listening to then. But I am just listening to Unsheathed right now and am utterly taken to another place and time and I'm absolutely love it.

What are some of your experiences when youve listend to Live and just had a "moment" when the absolutely nothing but Live mattered right then, whether it be powerful memories, life epiphanies, whatever. Times like right now for me that are utterly special because of Live somehow.


And as a side, fuck I hate iPhone spell correcting, even when drunk I know I don't want to spell "correcting" as "copes to" and so on. Quit making me take 5 times as long to type something as normal!

[sellingthdrama]

This is a long one, but I've got to tell this story. It's very much Live-related. It's really freakin long but it's a Live experience like no other. I'll cut out the fliff-fluff so more people stand a chance of reading it.

PART 1:

9 years ago, my friend and I were cruising around after the last day of classes. On a whim, we decided to make a left into a cemetary. As we turned into it, Lightning Crashes came on (we were listening to Throwing Copper). And SOMETHING - I could not tell you what, but SOMETHING - hit us. We just looked at each other and knew not to say a word - we didn't know what was going on, but we just didn't say a word. We just kept driving slowly through the cemetary. It was surreal.

More and more as we drove, I got this overwhelming feeling that someone, something, or some people were trying to communicate. It was an amazing feeling - it really really was love. It felt like a bunch of people, from all times, all places, and all walks of life were there in the cemetary telling there life stories. Some were old, some were young, some were kids - and the message of all of them was "go, live, love". For all they were saying and all the ins and outs of their lives that they were communicating, the overall message was just "go, live, love".

In particular, I kept seeing this one family - it was very sad. A mother, a young daughter about 7, and a young boy about 3. They were dressed in 1800s era-clothing, all in black. The mother was sad, and the daughter was sad and reading from a book. The little boy was kind of ignorant of what was going on. The father wasn't there. It all felt really sad, but in a strange, happy, love-type way. This is very hard to describe.

So towards the end of Lightning Crashes and the beginning of Top, the mood lightened a bit and my friend and decided it was time to say something. We were both in awe, like “what the hell was that?!” It was really just amazing…

PART 2:

Over the years since then, when I’ve listened to Lightning Crashes, I kept remembering that family I saw and sometimes feeling sad. The scene itself – the three of them without a father – it just seemed sad, like something happened.

Flash forward to 2009. I’m driving to work and Lightning Crashes comes on the radio. I’m immediately overwhelmed with sadness. Like – I started bawling. And I kept seeing this family, and the emotion of it all was overwhelming. I just cried and cried. Something about this family, and their situation, was just very very sad – it really hit home.

So I get to my office and sit down at my computer. I open the website of a local newspaper (like I did every morning) and BAM – the picture on the front page WAS this family. There was the mother, the daughter with her book, and the young boy dressed in 1800s garb in black. There they were, right in front of me on the website. It was a photo from a burial of a Civil War solder’s remains who had just been relocated from Virginia to Saratoga, NY (near where I live). The family in the photo were re-enacters playing the soldier’s family.

I can’t explain anything about this other than that I felt a sense of closure after that day. There was just some part of me left open that closed after that day in 2009. And I have no reason why it spanned 7 years, why Live was involved, and why I felt closure after reading the article about the soldier’s re-burial. All I can say is that it was amazing and inspiring.

This, friends, is the spirit of Live.