Live – I Walk the Line, by Gail Worley, Celebrity Guest Blogger

When 5th season American Idol contestant Chris Daughtry sang a brooding cover of Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line” in 2006, Idol fans went universally ape shit, calling the arrangement “wildly innovative” and raving about how refreshingly far removed it was from the up-tempo original. What most didn’t realize was that Daughtry’s performance was not so much an avant-garde homage to Cash was it was a direct rip off of a version of “I Walk The Line” that Pennsylvania rockers Live had been doing in concert for years.

Taking in Live vocalist Ed Kowalcyk’s modified Grizzly Adams look in this video as he croons “I Walk The Line,” it’s striking to compare the image of the mature man – now a husband and father – to the shirtless, would-be rock god whose impassioned performances of “I Alone” and “Lightning Crashes” drove teenage girls to throw their panties on the stage. Sixteen years after Kowalcyk and his band mates (Patrick Dahlheimer, Chad Taylor and Chad Gracey) hit their commercial and (arguably) creative apex with the blockbuster album Throwing Copper, which to date has sold 8 million copies in the US alone, all pretense of overt sex appeal has been long abandoned. But bagging the babes was never what Live was about as a band, anyway. Until the group’s break up in late 2009, it was Ed Kowalcyk’s charisma coupled with a voice like hot butter, and the band’s over the top musicianship culminating in Live’s consistently hysteria-inducing performances that put asses in the seats. And that’s what music is all about.

– Gail Worley is a Freelance Rock Critic and Author of the Phenomenal Pop Culture Blog, The Worley Gig (http://www.worleygig.com).

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