Liver

[Image: 'Liver' Front Cover]

© 1995 Warner Bros. Records Inc.
CD, Cassette

Sections:

Track Listing

  1. Jim Morrison's Grave (3:19)
  2. The Lament Of Desmond R.G. Underwood-Fredrick IV (4:37)
  3. I Want To Be A Clone (2:05)
  4. Escher's World (3:33)
  5. On The Fritz (6:31)
  6. Bannerman (3:19)
  7. Hero (5:14)
  8. Jesus Is For Losers (4:13)
  9. The Finish Line (5:41)
  10. Violent Blue (4:29)

About The Album

From Steve Taylor, New Music Guide, Spring 1995:

What would compel one to name an album after an internal body part?

[Pause. Laughter.] Oh, yeah. The new album... I was going to ask what you were talking about... Usually titles are the toughest thing for me. "What do you name this album?" Usually I just cheese out and name it after a song. I was sitting one night trying to figure out what to name this thing, going through a long list of names, and nothing was quite striking me. And I was thinking aobut the word "live" and it came--"liver." How do you pronounce it? I don't care. Either way, it works. That's the beauty of it. And I must say it's the most sure I've ever been of a title, for better, for worse.

When asked in years past about live albums, you've stated that you're not real fond of them.

Part of the reason why I don't like live albums is that most of them aren't really live albums. You do a concert, you get some audience on tape, maybe you keep the drums, but most everything else is replaced so that by the time you're done, what you've got is a studio album with a live soundtrack.

Technology came so that we could have 24-track recording in tour with us every night. Originally I was going to take different selections from different nights, but then I said, "No, that's cheating. I'm just going to take things from one night."

So without a net, without overdubs...

...and the problem is that it's not an even playing field. People are going to listen to this and say, "My gosh. What are you doing here? You've got some pitch problems, don't you?" I don't like to think of it as singing flat; I like to think of it as non-pitch specific...

From Liver Press Release, May 1995:

For better or worse, it's as live as it gets. [...] I don't know if most people know that there's really no such thing as a live record these days, because on just about everything that you hear, even an 'MTV Unplugged,' everybody goes back to the studio and fixes things. You do a concert, you get some audience on tape, maybe you keep the drums, but most everything else is fixed or replaced, so the whole sense of an actual live record gets taken away. Of course, the downside of the way we did it is that the guitar player might break a string, or the singer occasionally sings out of tune, though, for myself, I like to think of it as non-pitch-specific.

[No overdubs.] We recorded most of the shows on the tour, but picking the best performances from different nights seemed like cheating, too, so we just went with one night's concert. I had to be doctrinaire with it, otherwise I knew I'd start second-guessing everything.