Live's Throwing Copper: 25 years on, suddenly contemporary

Throwing Copper by Live: the 25th Anniversary edition is a classic alt.rock reissue

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Live: Throwing Copper artwork
(Image: © Live)

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Live - Throwing Copper Throwing Copper (25th Anniversary)

Live - Throwing Copper artwork

(Image credit: Live)

1. Dam At Otter Creek
2. Selling The Drama
3. I Alone
4. Iris
5. Lightning Crashes
6. Top
7. All Over You
8. Shit Towne
9. T.B.D.
10. Stage
11. Waitress
12. Pillar of Davidson
13. White, Discussion
14. Horse
15. Hold Me Up
16. We Deal In Dreams
17. Susquehanna

In 1994, Pennsylvania’s Live surprised everyone with second album Throwing Copper. 

This was an album stuffed with big melodies, emotive choruses and musical depth. 

Produced by Talking Heads’ Jerry Harrison, it didn’t fit trends at the time, falling somewhere between Bon Jovi and Pearl Jam. 

25 years on it stands as a stunning collection of tracks, with the likes of I Alone and Lightning Crashes still holding the attention. 

This reissue comes in LP and CD formats. Both feature Horse, which was a hidden track a quarter of a century ago, plus three bonus cuts. 

The CD version also has a second disc featuring their performance at Woodstock 94. 

All of these are worth having, yet the album itself doesn’t need to be gilded with these extras, because the music on the original actually sounds contemporary and emphasises that Live were something special in those days.

Malcolm Dome
Malcolm Dome

Malcolm Dome had an illustrious and celebrated career which stretched back to working for Record Mirror magazine in the late 70s and Metal Fury in the early 80s before joining Kerrang! at its launch in 1981. His first book, Encyclopedia Metallica, published in 1981, may have been the inspiration for the name of a certain band formed that same year. Dome is also credited with inventing the term "thrash metal" while writing about the Anthrax song Metal Thrashing Mad in 1984. With the launch of Classic Rock magazine in 1998 he became involved with that title, sister magazine Metal Hammer, and was a contributor to Prog magazine since its inception in 2009. He died in 2021.