Live - Secret Samadhi


Speaking of smorgasbords and ladies' bathrooms, here's Live's Secret Samadhi. The title at least implies that the album is a meditation on reality, but it's Ed Kowalczyk so i have to keep a dictionary close because i don't have a clue who/what he's referring to half the time. Sure i know that Lakini is the goddess of the Manipura (solar plexus/navel) Chakra, but what does washing her feet with water from the women's bathroom toilet actually mean? Jesco White is a mildly famous folk dancer/entertainer, but he's not dead so how could you lay flowers at his grave? "The followers of Aldous are spinning with their mescaline," Aldous Huxley obviously, but what does that have to do with the secondary thematic concept of intellectual propery? I can't even begin to dissect the convoluted metaphors of Ghost, and we're not even halfway through the album. That's why nobody has anything to say about this album, nobody actually knows what the hell Ed is talking about. Guess that's one way to keep your meditation secret.

Love is a dull knife because hippies ruined the party? Is this song ironic? I think Unsheathed is supposed to be, but i'm not at all sure.

Angels and bagels, homophobic dreams, whatever the hell Gas Hed is, about the only thing you can definitively say about Secret Samadhi is that it depicts a specifically American experience. Call it bipolar, borderline, whatever, the point is that there is an unresolvable binary opposition at war within our psyche, and 'Merica is nothing if not horny for all out war with the Other. In fact we search it out, we turn everything into a fantasy road trip to California for fame and fortune, and if that isn't your deepest desire then you definitely don't fit in and everyone will call you queer.

Be warned though, this album is also psychotically loud. Madonna's Like A Prayer might be explicitly touted as "A Digital Recording," but you could press it straight to vinyl and it would sound fine. Secret Samadhi will take your head off in terms of apparent loudness. 

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