This started out as just a story about a link I discovered but it turned into its own post. Despite what a shitshow Twitter has become, I still find really good links via the people I follow.
YouTube surfaced that Chad Gracey, the drummer from Live, has been posting solo performance play along videos with various Live songs. I wondered why he’d be doing that since it seems a little odd even though I enjoy them. He’s posted roughly 3 songs a month. Turns out that he isn’t in the band anymore and this Rolling Stone article, A Tale of Two Chads, gets into the reasons.
I had stopped following the band with the release of V in 2001. I just wasn’t into it. I was aware of them in the early 90s. A co-worker at Sound Warehouse would play Mental Jewelry at work and I didn’t like it much. Throwing Copper was released when I was living in NY and blew up. I liked “Selling the Drama” which was the first single. Later, I bought the album and realized the entire thing was good in addition to all of the singles that were being played non-stop. I went back and bought Mental Jewelry and played that all the way through for several months. This was just after I moved back to Austin in 1995. They released Secret Samadhi followed by The Distance to Here. I saw them live at Southpark Meadows back when it was a music venue. That might’ve been the last live show I saw there before it got turned into a massive shopping area. I loved both of those records and would listen to them all of the way through. V was the first one where I didn’t do that and that’s where I pretty much stopped following them. They played a show in 2000 or so at Waterloo Park and we brought H. It was just before the release of V and was also a mediocre show. They played ACL in 2017 and I watched the live stream from home. I think I noticed the second drummer but didn’t realize that was the beginning of the end for Chad. I’ve always really liked his drumming so I’m sad to see him part ways with the band under such poor circumstances even if I’d lost track of them after 2000. I always though Ed was a little pretentious but you can’t deny his presence or his songwriting. I have to say that I dig the videos that Chad is posting and hope he lands on something else if he wants to keep playing.