All That To You In A Church By The Sea

Unusual as it may be for me to post twice in one day (at least these days), I realized that I forgot to mention another reason why Zack and Miri Make a Porno is a-okay in my book. Little-known fact about me: I'm a big fan of the band Live. Not big enough to go to their concerts or buy albums or anything (though if I went to concerts or bought albums, I might go to and buy theirs), but they're still one of my favorite bands. I haven't heard every song of theirs nor could I even name a single band member...but I know they're from Pennsylvania.

The thing is, the songs of theirs that I do know, I adore. Not just love: adore. I think All Over You is one of my top five favorite songs of all time (I couldn't name the other four off the top of my head...I feel weird naming it my Number One when I may just be forgetting something), which is strange because the song is kind of nonsensical...a sample:

All over you, all over me
The sun, the fields, the sky
I've often tried to hold the sea
The sun, the fields, the tide
Pay me now, lay me down

One could interpret various things from it, I suppose, or maybe there's some definite story behind it of which I am unaware. Either way, I love the song and feel like, if I could somehow make sense of playing it at my wedding, I would do just that. Maybe it was a time and place thing...perhaps some nostalgic button gets pushed in my mind whenever I hear it. Or maybe it's just awesome.

So while All Over You sits at the top of the Live heap, I still have immense adoration for I Alone, Selling the Drama, The Dolphin's Cry, Dance With You, Lightning Crashes, Run to the Water and Overcome. Actually, what I said above about adoring all the songs of theirs that I've heard isn't totally accurate...I'm kinda iffy on Lakini's Juice, Run Away and Century. I don't dislike them, but they're certainly a few rungs down the ladder from the best of the best.

Of course, anyone who knows me well enough and is passingly familiar with these songs or the band probably isn't too surprised by this fact. Live specializes in vaguely intense "emotional rock," let's say...songs that are steeped in feeling and proclamations of love and other "putting it all out there" emotions. Allow me to quote from Dance With You:

I wanna dance with you
I see a world where people live and die with grace
The karmic ocean dried up and leave no trace
I wanna dance with you
I see a sky full of the stars that change our minds
And lead us back to a world we would not face

They can get a little heavy-handed...and I adore them for it. It's like my emotions learned how to play guitar and drums and came from Pennsylvania. I love other bands, too, but I have to admit that, for me, Live sits near the top (or at least "classic" Live...their recent songs have been a bit too mellow, a la Run Away).

So I'm watching Zack and Miri Make a Porno today, and during a crucial moment in the film, a song begins to play...it's unfamiliar, and yet I recognize the "stylings." Most importantly, it's an amazing song, and I quickly realize that it's Live. Excited, I rushed home (after the movie is over, mind you) and quickly searched for the title of this mysterious song...only to learn that it was called Hold Me Up (or Lift Me Up or Spew) and it was an unreleased track from the band's earlier, harder-rocking days (around the time of All Over You...possibly intended for the same album).

After doing a lot more research (it's been a slow day), I discovered that Kevin Smith has actually been trying to use the song since Mallrats (and included it on a rough cut of the film before being told that the band wanted it removed). There's a really interesting story from Smith himself about the history of the song and his requests here (the story was written pre-Zack and Miri). The song was passed around on bootleg cassette tapes from fan to fan (showing you how old this song is), but has never been available in any studio-finished version...until its inclusion in Zack and Miri (discussed here). Unfortunately, the song is also not being included on the film's soundtrack and no official release is yet in sight...however, it is available on YouTube:

Like all classic Live songs, it's basically a rock-flavored love song. I have to say, while I'm not a huge fan of the instrumental interlude at around 2:00 in, the song has already raced up my heart-ladder to rest alongside the likes of Overcome and The Dolphin's Cry. It may not quite rival All Over You right now, but a studio-finished version might change that...I adore it that much. Fine work, Live...and fine work, Kevin Smith, for occasionally pulling a song out of your ass that's pretty damn great (Can't Even Tell by Soul Asylum [Clerks], Suzanne by Weezer [Mallrats], 1979 by The Smashing Pumpkins [Clerks II]).

Oh...so apparently, the internet is filled with song interpretations (who knew?) and given my above assumption that All Over You has no real meaning (as that's what I had been told, and the lyrics really seem to back that up...hey, REM's lyrics usually don't make sense, either), I figured it might be interesting to take one of my favorite songs and, you know, see what it means. It seems that there are three commonly assigned meanings to the song: that it's about the singer's relationship with God (they're NOT a Christian rock band, so no), it's about a relationship that seems strange from the outside but makes sense on the inside (a logical, if literal, interpretation of the lyrics), or...that it's about someone who is obsessively in love with someone that he can't have ("Our love is no other/Than me alone/For me all day"). Seriously? After all these years of loving this song, who knew it would come to be the soundtrack of my current existence? Which, of course, makes me adore it even more.