What is the most embarrassing thing Live has ever done? Options

[SecretInsomnia]

For me the most embarrassing moment is not on the list. My most embarrassing moment is when Ed said in a late night show that he wrote Overcome a year ago ( the show was in 2001) when we all know (the fans at least) that it was written back in 1998 (or even before). I've always hated that moment. It's like if Ed wanted to take the opportunity to get popular again with the september 11th event. There was no place for a stupid lie there!

I fully agree with you that Ed fools everyone by saying that Overcome was written a year before 2001...There are early concert versions of the song in 1998
...But what do you mean by saying 'Ed wanted to take the opportunity to get popular again with the september 11th event'?? If he wrote that in 2000 (as he said) it was ALSO before september 11th, so for getting popular it would be the same thing when he wrote it in 2000 or 1998 (which is the case).
Though it sounds weird he didn't tell the truth...maybe he said he made/recorded it a year ago ?! (cause when talkin' about the V-version, he would be right).

[Heather]

I'm not sure I remember it clearly but I think he said he wrote the song a year before Sept 11th and the song was about the state the world was in at that time or something. I just remember him somehow trying to tie the whole song into the whole 9/11 tragedy. When in fact he wrote it back in the 90's about the death of his manager or something. The whole thing was just odd.

[Edismyhero]

That original video of Overcome with Ed looking like Richard Simmons and the waterfall effect were pretty buttock clenching for me, but then again, SFBM... "Think of gentle Jesus" *vomits*.

LOL I sorta disagree with you here but I still found your post very amusing!
If I had to pick one I think it would be Nickelback. I guess their songs are what you would consider good, his voice is good, and they aren't bad, but I still can't really tolerate them. I get bored, all their songs seem the same and I tune out.
I bet on the Overcome thing, Ed was talking about reconfiguring the song from a full band version to a piano version. He probably just didn't want to go into too many details in describing well actually it was written then, but I changed it this way because, and then it became... blah blah blah. That's what I would figure.
I'm surprised that the duet w/ Shelby Lynn is on here, I thought that the duet was better than the original on BOP

[edstipe]

If I had to pick one I think it would be Nickelback. I guess their songs are what you would consider good, his voice is good, and they aren't bad

You have got to be fucking kidding me.

[Edismyhero]

You have got to be fucking kidding me.

I was trying to be decently nice here, but I mean in comparison to some of the stuff that's on the radio they are the lesser of two evils . Surely someone must listen to them as they are played non-stop on the radio stations. The song I did/do like though is that "Hero" song from spiderman. I think that is a very good song.

[Senghe]

^ No need to be decently nice when we're talking about Nickelback.

The lesser of the two evils is turning the damn radio off when they come on. I suspect they're one of the bands that the record label promotes heavily to the point of paying bungs to the music media. If you don't believe, they're signed to Sony BMG (via Roadrunner) who got fined $10 million for paying bribes to radio DJs to play their artists. This gives a false sense of how popular the bands/songs are.

Mind you, they sell albums by the million so somebody's buying this corporate shit.

This post has been edited by Senghe: Feb 27 2007, 7:02 pm

[Heather]

^ No need to be decently nice when we're talking about Nickelback.

The lesser of the two evils is turning the damn radio off when they come on. I suspect they're one of the bands that the record label promotes heavily to the point of paying bungs to the music media. If you don't believe, they're signed to Sony BMG (via Roadrunner) who got fined $10 million for paying bribes to radio DJs to play their artists. This gives a false sense of how popular the bands/songs are.

Mind you, they sell albums by the million so somebody's buying this corporate shit.

Thank god somebody else out there gets how it works. The fact that they are selling millions of albums is a perfect example of something being shoved down people's throats until they think they love it. The mindless sheep out there that don't bother to be exposed to any other kind of music than what some marketing executive has decided they should hear are the ones that buy into that shit. I can't even listen to regular radio anymore it makes me sick and it bugs the ever living shit out of me that other people love everything they hear because they don't know any better.

[dramaqueen]

Nickelback, no question. I'm probably one of the very few Canadians that think Nickelback are are absolute crap. It pained me to no end to pay my $80 to see Live open their show. Now I'd pay anything to go to a Live show but to know most of my money was going to Nickelback nearly broke my heart.

[Kymra]

I'm not sure I remember it clearly but I think he said he wrote the song a year before Sept 11th and the song was about the state the world was in at that time or something. I just remember him somehow trying to tie the whole song into the whole 9/11 tragedy. When in fact he wrote it back in the 90's about the death of his manager or something. The whole thing was just odd.

Wasn't it one of the rescue workers who took footage and used Overcome because the lyrics worked so well? I remember Ed saying he and Erin were in bed watching the coverage and it just came on. Basically, it was used without their permission at first.. isn't that right?

[dangum]

Basically, it was used without their permission at first.. isn't that right?

Yep, that's right. Here's an article that discusses how the video came about. And take a look at this video of Ed walking around New York after the attacks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi6yudu713o



Overcome by emotion

Nov 1, 2001 12:00 PM, By Cody Holt

After two hours of sleep, Steve Rosenbaum awoke wondering if he had dreamed the previous day's events. It was Wednesday morning, September 12, and his mind raced with the incomprehensible images of buildings falling, a frantic, fleeing melee, and the surreal, overnight Gotham hours of destruction and loss.

Twenty-four hours earlier, as the morning's unimaginable events began to take shape, Rosenbaum had been thinking only of the job at hand. As president of Broadcast News Network (BNN), which makes news documentaries for cable networks like MSNBC, Rosenbaum had sent six camera crews out to tape the devastation. In the evening, he went to Ground Zero himself. But not until this moment, as he lie awake in bed, was he ever truly alone with the images. A new song from the rock band Live played on the radio. Rosenbaum got out of bed and went back to work.

In his New York City office, which is also home to BNN subsidiary CameraPlanet.com, Rosenbaum watched the previous day's events unfold again. This time, he saw the scenes as documented by the six CameraPlanet crews, each one of which had taped with a Sony VX2000 from 10:15 a.m. September 11 until 3 a.m. September 12. As he watched the images, he remembered the song from the radio. “Overcome,” it was called, seemed to have been written for this moment in history. He went to his computer to download the song.

“I started listening to the words of the song while watching the images and suddenly I just broke down,” Rosenbaum recalls. “I'd been trying to understand how I felt about the events at the World Trade Center. I wasn't scared, or terrified, or angry, or any of the other words the media was using. I was overcome, just like the song says.”

Convinced that the song was the appropriate musical backdrop for his crews' images, Rosenbaum went down the hall to ask his wife, an editor at the company, to spend an hour on a rough cut. “I was completely blown away by how somber and almost cathartic the images were against the soundtrack,” Rosenbaum says of his wife's edit. By the end of the day, he had a final version, which was cut in Final Cut Pro, dumped to DV, and output to Digital Betacam.

The next morning, Rosenbaum cold-called VH1, the cable music network, and within an hour the video was on the air. With its grim, desolate images of the overnight Ground Zero rescue efforts and the hauntingly prescient lyrics of Live's lead singer, Ed Kowalczyk, the video immediately went into heavy rotation.

On Friday, three days after the WTC attacks, Rosenbaum got a call from Chris Harden, the band's manager. “I was thinking, ‘Oh great, we're in trouble now,’” says Rosenbaum, who didn't get permission to use the song. “But he said, ‘We only have one thing to say to you: Thank you.’”

The band was so impressed with the concept that it decided to shoot another version of the video, this one with studio shots of Kowalczyk against a backdrop of CameraPlanet's images. Exactly one week after the attacks, director Mary Lambert filmed the singer under an artificial waterfall in a Los Angeles studio. But when Harden asked Rosebaum to send him CameraPlanet's rescue footage, Rosenbaum balked.

“I told him ‘no,’” Rosenbaum says. “I just felt like whatever they did needed to be honest. And I told him if Ed [Kowalczyk] wanted to get involved, he should come to New York.” Amazingly, he did.

The very next night, Kowalczyk, Rosenbaum, and his wife spent four hours walking around the southern tip of Manhattan, in and around Ground Zero. As the group stood near the West Side Highway, staring at the void in the skyline once dominated by the Twin Towers, Rosenbaum asked Kowalczyk to sing “Overcome.” Once again, Kowalczyk agreed. Rosenbaum's wife captured the moment on a VX2000, and the band's video was born.

http://digitalcontentproducer.com/mag/vide...ercome_emotion/

This post has been edited by dangum: Feb 28 2007, 12:24 am

[Heather]

Wasn't it one of the rescue workers who took footage and used Overcome because the lyrics worked so well? I remember Ed saying he and Erin were in bed watching the coverage and it just came on. Basically, it was used without their permission at first.. isn't that right?

Yeah he said that too but that isn't what he said on Leno. I wish I could remember exactly what he said. Maybe I'll have to go dig up the tape.

[Eickelman0767]

I didn't have a problem with any of the above moves. I liked the Run Away duet with Shelby Lynne. The boys rocked it out on American Idol and with a proper label push the appearance could have been huge for them. Unfortunately they were signed to Epic, but that's another story.

Also, V and SFBM are two of my favorite albums. Nickelback sucks, but what's wrong with Live upstaging a band in their own home country.

Needless to say I did not vote

My sentiments exactly. I agree 100 %.

IMO I think that the lyrical content of SS is far worse that either V or SFBM ( "puke stinks like beer" ? ) but still not embarrassing. I don't think I will vote either. There just isn't much about this band that is embarrassing to me.

[dabutcher]

I'm not going to Vote because what I would pick is not on there.

The Shelby Lynn duet-Not really embarrassing but at the same time-it sucked. what was the point? Edismyhero you seriously think that the Shelby Lynn version is better than the one on BOP? If that is true than I'm not sure what to think of yah, guess ya just like softer Live or something.

Anywho I love 5 and SFBM is a little weak but yet still better than almost anything on the radio. Plus the SFBM songs are great live.

American Idol-this made me seriously question whether the band had sold out or not.

Oh my God Nickelback sucks balls! they have the most mindless meaningless unintelligent lyrics, they have nothing to say, they only glam shit up for record sales. I went to see Chevelle last year and they were openers for Nickelback. After Chevelle was done playing I just straight up left, I wasnt' gonna sit and watch a lame ass band play jerk music after just seeing Chevelle rock the stage. Its kinda funny I gave serious thought to just sticking around and waiting for Nickelback to play so I could give the finger to the lead singer, you know kinda show him what I personally thought of his band. but it wasnt worth it anyways, so I just left. I guess I'm kinda used to seeing my favorite bands open for shittier ones. The best is RARELY the most popular.

What I'm most dissapointed in Live in is for not speaking out more on the state of the world. I know its great to be happy with your own life and I'm happy for Ed, but all the problems with the world outside yours don't just go away. They need to speak out more. I searched the bands website and there was not one activism link or informational link. Just other fansite links. sometimes I wonder if they are afraid to speak out more. What are we fighting for? was great but since that song came out they havent really said a thing. Politics aside-I would say "Home" is a pathetic attempt at an anti war song thats really trying not to piss anyone off. They need to let loose. I know that its not Live's responsibility to speak out, they are rock stars, entertainers if you will. But when you are famous like rock stars are, your voice is louder than the rest, you have to take advantage of that. Try to make a difference.

All of this is of course just my humble opinion so do whit it whatever you will

[Existentialist]

My sentiments exactly. I agree 100 %.

IMO I think that the lyrical content of SS is far worse that either V or SFBM ( "puke stinks like beer" ? ) but still not embarrassing. I don't think I will vote either. There just isn't much about this band that is embarrassing to me.

That line from Century contributes heavily to the overall meaning, and is not arbitrary crap like most of the lyrics on V and beyond. Century is all about how modern society has become obsessed with meaningless bullshit, where people get caught up in their thoughts and get in trivial arguments over them, all the while missing the big picture of love and simplicity. Live wants to lay waste to this bullshit society and return to the "nothing" that is just pure being, a quasi existentialist point of view I might add.

That line in the verses is great juxtaposition of the state of "being" where thoughts are limited to only what the world gives us, and the current state where people are consumed with ideas and are all anxious and fearful. It's brilliant lyrical composition, really, and in my opinion is one of their best works from a lyrical standpoint.

And therein lies the difference between Live pre 1999 and modern Live. A seemingly trivial, bullshit line pre 1999 has significant meaning when analyzed properly, yet pick anything from modern Live and you can tell it is nothing more than trivial bullshit at first look. In an attempt to keep this on topic, the most embarrassing thing Live has ever done is to actually release V, BOP and SFBM.

[Senghe]

What I'm most dissapointed in Live in is for not speaking out more on the state of the world. I know its great to be happy with your own life and I'm happy for Ed, but all the problems with the world outside yours don't just go away. They need to speak out more. I searched the bands website and there was not one activism link or informational link. Just other fansite links. sometimes I wonder if they are afraid to speak out more. What are we fighting for? was great but since that song came out they havent really said a thing. Politics aside-I would say "Home" is a pathetic attempt at an anti war song thats really trying not to piss anyone off. They need to let loose. I know that its not Live's responsibility to speak out, they are rock stars, entertainers if you will. But when you are famous like rock stars are, your voice is louder than the rest, you have to take advantage of that. Try to make a difference.

I have never been impressed by pontificating little cocks such as the likes of Bono and Chris Martin droning on about politics, environmentalism and usually fucking PETA. I'd say if you have to rely on musicians and actors to confirm or form your world view, we're fucked. Also there are many bands who's music I like and message I don't necessarily agree with. Maybe Ed has the common sense to realize that life isn't black and white, most issues are not as clear cut as the media will have you believe and that Live's audience are old and wise enough to do their own research into the geopolitical world and environmental issues.

I actually have more respect for Live for not trying to ram some agenda down my throat along with the music.