Live, ManBREAK
Blockbuster F-Centre, Camden, New Jersey, August 8


"THIS SONG is people about people who masturbate while watching television," says ManBREAK vocalist Swindelli, before throwing himself in the air and flopping around the stage like a fish.
Opening for any band in a huge arena is challenging enough, but when a previously unknown bunch of scousers who quote the Beastie Boys in every other sentence takes the stage, you never know what will happen.
ManBREAK couldn't get arrested in their home country. But in the suburban sterility of the F-Centre, songs like 'Round And Round' and 'Ready Or Not' coral a crowd who don't know what hit them into sitting up and paying attention. If this is anything to go by, then this time next year, ManBREAK will be back headlining places like this.
Live on the other hand, have been playing places like this for three years now, and much of the time it seems they really have been sleeping. Not tonight. Forget all the mystical nonsense that surrounds Pennsylvania's finest. The only thing that needs to be explained is why they have waited for so long to drop an absolute bomb of a performance like this one.
"How are you feeling now?" asks Ed Kowalczyk after leading the crowd through electric versions of 'Freaks' and 'White, Discussion'. The response is enormous. Cheers and applause rings from all corners of the arena, and even the food bars outside suddenly empty.
Keeping this sort of pace has never been easy for Live in the past - they've always fumbled their catches by dwelling on more ponderous moments like 'Turn My Head'. But tonight, as they bounce back and forth between atmospheric spirituality and weightier considerations, it's difficult to be cynical. Everything, from the way the bleach-blond Kowalczyk sounds like he's singing directly to every person in the house to the moment when the huge array of lights illuminates the whole of the venue during 'Pain Lies By The Riverside', indicates that Live might have cornered the market in Shamanic arena rock, but they haven't forgotten the all-important personal touch.
And the band certainly knows it too. They just effortlessly sail through songs 'Selling The Drama' and 'I Alone', as they combine slickness with power.
And while the last album 'Secret Samadhi' might not have nestled its way into every alternative rock household the way 'Throwing Copper' did, newer songs like 'Rattlesnake' and especially the brittle 'Lakini's Juice' sound as sweeping as any of their predecessors.
It's not difficult to see why Live are so successful. They combine muscle and mystique in equal amounts, pandering to all the conventions of arena rock, but making sure their material possesses enough intelligence to raise themselves about their peers. And if tonight is anything to go by, they deserve every dollar.

Written by Tony Romando; from Kerrang! August 1997

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