Turn My Head

Song: Turn My Head
Artist: Live
Album: Secret Samadhi
Released: February 1997

Alright the first thing yo need to know is that Live is my favorite band, I mean head and shoulders above the rest, it isn't even difficult for me to decide that. It was hard to not include 10+ songs of theirs on this list. But I'm not sure that I made the right choice with Turn My Head, with all the other great songs they have. When I made the list I tried to do it on a "which would I rather listen to" basis and there are probably two or three other songs on that album that I would rather listen to. So hear we are 4 songs into the countdown and screw up number one is revealed.

Oh well, Turn My Head is a great song. The reason for my liking Turn My Head so much has a lot to do with why I like Live. The band is so versatile. On their first album (Mental Jewelry) they were kind of an indie rock, philosophical, slash a little weird, kind of young band. It's an album that takes some getting used to, especially if your first exposure to the band was Throwing Copper (the greatest album of all time, hands down), as was my experience. Then on Throwing Copper they really blossomed into a band that could flat out blow the doors off with rock, or move you with mid tempo to slow softer tunes. Throwing Copper is a journey that showcases all the best parts of Live. Secret Samadhi was, by a lot of accounts, fallout of the mega success the band experienced for two plus years during the Throwing Copper days. Ed Kowalczyk (lead singer/song writer) himself said "Secret Samadhi is the sound of full retreat, yet not out of fear but necessity. I was only 25 and already half-eaten by the monster of show-business. We were spiraling and spinning into the hell of cultural acceptance; we were successful! Something had to be done! We'll make a record that dances, explodes and swirls all around, and it shall be about 'nothing'". I hardly think the album is about nothing, there are clear re-occurring themes about self destruction, both on a personal level and as a society, but that's a different discussion entirely. Still the album hit number one the billboards, produced number one and number three singles, and had a Grammy nominated video. Still to me Secret Samadhi is a close second best on the band's resume of albums. It is even more diverse than Throwing Copper, or any of their other albums, both lyrically and musically. The album's songs range from brooding, exploding, enraged, to satirical, regretful, love smitten, melancholy, and finally proverbial.

Turn My Head is, I believe, Live's first real love song. Honestly I never really connected to it in a big way until recently. My brother always loved it and demanded that we listen to it every time I put the cd in his truck deck. To me it was always just kind of a sad sounding song, that lacked the signature freak out that I love in Live's earlier songs. These freak outs often occur in the bridge, being punctuated with a wooo!, yeah!, or these kind of primal rising screams, that Ed had once mastered. Turn My Head on the other hand show cases. for the first time, the more tender side of the band. The song starts out with a clean picking guitar, after the first measure the bass comes in gently laying the rhythmic foundation (which is perfect by the way), quickly followed by the drums. Chad Gracey (drummer) in my opinion is the most underrated piece of the band, he is simply amazing. Ed's vocal on this song is tremendous, it is the first song that he uses his falsetto as a major part of the song, and it works magically. That's the kind of thing that didn't fit my musical pallet at 13 or 14, but now I can fully appreciate. The lyrics of the song skip a long Ed's personal feelings like a flat stone on calm water, keeping the real meaning private, but still public enough to allow the listener to claim full ownership of the emotion behind it. You can kind of fill in the blanks, and that's what I like about it. I love Ed's choice of words in this not so wordy song. You feel that this person is mysterious, but completely captivating in his use of keep it whispy, I've fallen down, drunk on your juices. She's delicate, and vulnerable, but she's so pure and intoxicating that she's tamed him to where he will bow because of the power her attraction has over him. This is, hopefully, the same way all men feel for their significant others. While Turn My Head isn't a song that I would term as  one "our songs" (my wife and I's), it is a song that makes me think of my wife, and it is just plain, an awesome love song. In my library those are actually kind of hard to find. The song peaks at the bridge (Live are the masters of the bridge) which flows into a great little guitar solo which carries the song into a gentle finale capped by one more coo of falsetto by Ed. Great song folks, maybe it does belong on my 100 after all.

anyone, caught in your mystery
keep it angry
keep it whispy
i've fallen down
drunk on your juices
.
turn my head
turn my head
it's aimed at you
.
funky temple
your dress is torn to shreds
your eyes are crazy
i bowed to save my head and
i can't forget you
but i can remember
.
turn my head
turn my head
it's aimed at you
.
oh no,
we came to love you all day
these bastards are leavin'
somebody's got to stay
whatever we called you
it's just a name
just a name