Take My Anthem: Live’s First Album Expanded in August
Fans of ’90s alternative staple Live have had a lot to be happy about in the last few months. Late last year, after an acrimonious split, lead singer Ed Kowalczyk returned as lead singer of the band after seven years apart. With tour dates and a new album in the works, the quartet are also taking time to look back, with a newly expanded edition of their first album as Live, 1991’s Mental Jewelry.
After a self-released album and EP under the moniker Public Affection, Live (Kowalczyk, guitarist Chad Taylor, bassist Patrick Dahlheimer and drummer Chad Gracey) signed to Radioactive Records and collaborated with Talking Heads keyboardist Jerry Harrison in the producer’s chair. Inspired in part by the teachings of philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti, Mental Jewelry was an album of unique expression and introspection that resonated with many in search of answers through music. Though it only reached No. 73 on the Billboard 200, lead single “Operation Spirit” cracked the Top 10 of Billboard‘s alternative charts, with follow-up “Pain Lies On the Riverside” reaching No. 25 on that same chart. The album ultimately went platinum, no doubt spurred to some success by the band’s bestselling follow-ups Throwing Copper (1994) and Secret Samadhi (1997), the former of which featured the band’s biggest pop hit, “Lightning Crashes.”
The reissued Mental Jewelry (available as a 2CD set or on vinyl) includes three non-album tracks (including the previously unreleased “Born Branded”), a remix of “Pain Lies on the Riverside” by Hank Shocklee of The Bomb Squad and an unreleased concert from The Roxy in the summer of 1992. The sets are available August 11, less than a week after the band’s appearance at Lollapalooza in Chicago.
Live, Mental Jewelry: 25th Anniversary Edition (Radioactive/Geffen/UMe B0026607-02, 2017)
2CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon Canada / Amazon U.K.
LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon Canada / Amazon U.K.
Disc 1: Expanded album (originally released as Radioactive RARD 10346, 1991)
- Pain Lies On the Riverside
- Operation Spirit (The Tyranny of Tradition)
- The Beauty of Gray
- Brothers Unaware
- Tired of “Me”
- Mirror Song
- Waterboy
- Take My Anthem
- You Are the World
- Good Pain
- Mother Earth is a Vicious Crowd
- 10,000 Years (Peace is Now)
- Born Branded (previously unreleased)
- Pain Lies On the Riverside (Club Mix by Hank Shocklee) (from Action Front Records AFR-001 – distributed as holiday gift to band fan club in 1996)
- Negation (from Four Songs EP – Radioactive RARDS-54236, 1991)
- Heaven Wore a Shirt (from Four Songs EP – Radioactive RARDS-54236, 1991)
Disc 2: Live At The Roxy, Los Angeles – 7/16/1992 (previously unreleased)
- Show Intro
- Waterboy
- Take My Anthem
- Pain Lies On the Riverside
- Susquehanna
- Negation
- You Are the World
- Tired of “Me”
- Heaven Wore a Shirt
- Operation Spirit (The Tyranny of Tradition)
- Good Pain
- The Beauty of Gray
- 10,000 Years (Peace is Now)
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2 thoughts on “Take My Anthem: Live’s First Album Expanded in August”
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This is fascinating to me, though perhaps from a supremely nostalgic perspective. I loved this album, and had the Four Songs ep, and I thought Throwing Copper was mostly superb, but I fell out of love after that. V was a bit of a train wreck, and I didn’t follow after that.
Disc one track 13 [Born Branded] was released on a promotional various disc called ‘ radioactive Sampler’ Radioactive Records Radioactive PO-MISC-RAD1. circa 1993.