Mental Jewelry by Live

Mental Jewelry came out on Radioactive on December 31, 1991, the first album by the York, Pennsylvania band under the name Live and their major-label debut, with Jerry Harrison producing. Before that they had been Public Affection, and they were still using that name when they shot the video for "Operation Spirit (The Tyranny of Tradition)", the song that got them on MTV.

Ed Kowalczyk sings and plays guitar with the fervor of a young man who has just discovered philosophy, and many of the songs draw on the writings of the Indian thinker Jiddu Krishnamurti. The music is earnest and restless, with a funk-rock streak driven by Patrick Dahlheimer's slap bass on "Pain Lies on the Riverside", "Operation Spirit" and "Waterboy", while Chad Taylor's guitars chime and churn and Chad Gracey keeps the drums taut. Sales were modest, but the band's bigger days were only a few years away.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.