Selling the Drama

 Song: Selling the Drama
Artist: Live
Album: Throwing Copper
Released: April 1994

Ah, just seeing that album cover makes me happy. It just screams quality right from the get go. This is easily one of the best album covers of all time, which is fitting for the best album of all time! Well that's my humble opinion anyway. It is seriously hard to limit myself to the number of songs on this list that come from this album. It makes me want to shake my head in unbelief that I even had to rank "Selling the Drama" this low, but every song on Throwing Copper (and what a freakin' awesome name for an album) is just so dang good!

At any rate, number 91 is "Selling the Drama". The first three notes of the song are classic, they just make you feel good, and they bring a flood of great memories to mind. Memories that are both new and old, from my childhood, to high school, to the very recent. For many years I skipped over "the dam at otter creek" (the album's opening track) when listening to Throwing Copper, and so "Selling the Drama" was the opening track for me for a long time. There are too many things that I relate this song to, for me to pick just one to elaborate on. Rather it represents a kaleidoscope vision of, good times with good friends, and family.

"Selling the Drama" is probably the most controlled song off the album, and that's probably why I ranked it lower than any of the other songs from Throwing Copper. I love the passion that Live put into each of the songs on Throwing Copper, and while "Selling the Drama" gives you a sample of their exemplary freak outs at the end of the song, it is short and at the very end of the song, which makes it short, and in my book just not as good. "Selling the Drama" is the perfect opener for the CD though. I still call it the opener because "the dam at otter creek" is more like an extended introduction to the album as a whole. "otter creek" is one big crescendo that is very rough and raw and it transitions perfectly into the beauty of "Selling the Drama".  The song has very poignant lyrics, that question much larger subject matter that I care to take on right now, but they are worded perfectly. The song is highly polished and perfectly represents the quality the album has to offer. From start to finish, this song is simply timeless.

and to love: a god
and to fear: a flame
and to burn a crowd that has a name
and to right or wrong
and to meek or strong
it is known, just scream it from the wall

I've willed, I've walked, I've read
I've talked, I know, I know,
I've been here before

hey, now we won't be raped
hey, now we won't be scarred like that

it's the sun that burns
it's the wheel that turns
it's the way we sing that makes 'em dream

and to christ: a cross
and to me: a chair
I will sit and earn the ransom
from up here