Courier Mail: Live find new joy in recording live album (February 28, 2009)

Live find new joy in recording live album

By Sally Browne

February 28, 2009 11:00pm

FOR years people have been asking Pennsylvania band Live when they are going to release the Live "live" album. It's been something of a running joke.

"Live squared," is what lead singer Ed Kowalczyk calls it.

Well, now they've finally done it. March 1 saw the Australian release of their debut live album and DVD, Live at the Paradiso.

Filmed in an old converted church in Amsterdam, the release sees the band at their rock best, playing hits including I Alone, Lightning Crashes and Overcome.

It's the fans in the crowd who put in a performance, too. Often they can be seen wiping away tears and are heard singing along to many of the tracks.

Recalls Kowalczyk: "It was funny because we had a lot of trouble mixing the record because the fans were so loud. At one point in the night they had a decibel meter that was reading the crowd at 115 decibels and the PA system at 108. So the crowd was actually louder than the PA system."

The band's Dutch fans are a keen lot. And so are the Australians.

Australia helped put Live on the map when they released their breakthrough album Throwing Copper in 1994.

"From the very beginning, when we stepped out of the United States the two countries that just grabbed the band and gave it a really big bear hug, if you will, and haven't let go, are the Dutch and the Aussies," Kowalczyk says.

Although no firm dates have been set, Live promises that an Australian tour is on the cards for later in the year.

The band has also launched a competition for fans to edit a video clip of their new single Forever, a version of which appears on Live at the Paradiso. Details can be found on http://www.friendsoflive.com

Ed says that one of the songs he most enjoyed performing on the live DVD was the track Overcome. Inside the former church, the crowd almost became a tabernacle choir as they sang along to the emotional song.

Kowalczyk originally wrote it as a personal hymn of gratitude, but it was embraced as an anthem of healing after the September 11 Twin Towers tragedy in New York.

The night of filming, Kowalczyk felt he repossessed the song.

"I was always in the back of my mind worried that I would never sing that song again without thinking of 9/11, and that night in Holland there was something about the energy in the crowd, also the election coming in the States, there was this whole feeling that kind of turned the song from a sad thing to a more hopeful song, which I always felt that it was."

After playing together for 15 or 20 years, Live have mellowed since their days as angst-ridden young men in the early '90s.

"We still go crazy on stage, but I think that we probably take things less seriously," Kowalczyk said.