My Bast Is Thoroughly Bombed

Album: Live, Throwing Copper, 1994

Best Track: "Stage"

Lasting Memory: Throwing Cooper is one of the exceptions to my general rule of not owning albums whose songs get played on the radio all the time. I don't know what brings me to ignore that rule in the abstract, but in the case of this album, I specifically remember wanting to be able to listen to the Live song "All Over You" any time I wanted.

I was impressed by the song's intensity and emotion. I was right there with lead singer Ed Kowalczyk every time he got that catch in his throat while transitioning into the chorus, "I ... I ... I alone looooove YOU!"

The song got me going every time, and I figured it wouldn't stop doing that as time passed.

I was right about the lasting effect of "All over You," but wrong about needing to needing to own Throwing Cooper so I wouldn't lose the opportunity to hear the song.

Turns out, radio has never taken "All Over You" or "I Alone" or "Lightning Crashes" out of middling rotation since their release 14 years ago. I don't blame radio programmers for using the songs as a few of their many, many crutches. Each is immediately arresting, have good beats, and on-the-surface interesting lyrics. How could anyone whose job it is to prick up people's ears ask for any more? And could a listener do better than any of these singles?

Those songs are the aural equivalent of a bacon cheeseburger followed by mint chocolate chip ice cream. Even if you're a vegetarian or allergic lactose intolerant, you can't help but want that meal and enjoy it completely when you get it.

Would you want it every day, though?

From it's first note to its last, Throwing Copper is all burger and ice cream. The volume and emotion are constantly set to 11. This makes listening all the way through the album exhausting; I know my bast will require a few days to fully recover from being so bombed by the album.

Constantly ratcheting up the pathos and import of the songs also leads Live into many melodramatic minefields. The lyrics of "All Over You" and "I Alone" can't miss being interpret ted as creepy stalker stories, and "Lightning Crashes" is about a stillbirth.

Things get really beyond the bearable on the last official track on Throwing Cooper, "White, Discussion":

I talk of freedom
You talk of the flag
I talk of revolution
You’d much rather brag
And as the decibels of this
disenchanting discourse
Continue to dampen the day

The coin flips again and again, and again, and again
As our sanity walks away
All this discussion though politically correct
Is dead beyond destruction
Though it leaves me quite erect

And as the final sunset rolls behind the earth
And the clock is finally dead
I'll look at you, you'll look at me
And we'll cry a lot
But this will be what we said
This will be what we said

Look where all this talking got us, baby

Heavy stuff. Self-consciously heavy and decidedly nonrocking stuff. The kind of heavy that verges into the land of portentousness.

I tabbed "Stage" as the best song on Throwing Copper precisely because the lyrics are unintelligible.

When a hidden track titled "Horse" pops up after "White, Discussion" it is a welcome reprieve because it is country-ish, humorous, and muted. A sample lyric runs "She rode a horse inside my head/ Now they're running wild." I would have welcomed more cranking things back to 6 or 7 like this.

Up Next: The Long Ryders, 10-5-60, 1983