Live and Direct: Live Comes Through Loud and Clear on MTV's 120 Minutes Tour

Contrary to popular belief, we are here in Boston to establish a personal relationship with two or three thousand people ... Not to give a rock concert." Vocalist Ed Kowalczyk says this as he stares into the middle distance of harsh stage lights and the shadows of several thousand tightly packed kids. He doesn't have to pretend to relate. At the age of 20, he's one of them.

Consisting of Kowalczyk, drummer Chad Gracey, bass player Patrick Dalheimer and guitarist Chad Taylor, the Pennsylvania band Live is touring with Big Audio Dynamite, Public Image Limited and Blind Melon on MTV's 120 Minutes national tour. The band, whose oldest member is 21, has been playing together since they were all in junior high. Now they've got a hit album, Mental Jewelry, and a slot on MTV. And they're getting ready to tour Europe and then record again. Think about that when you put on your graduation robe and a funny hat and pick up your degree.

Kowalcyzk is matter of fact about the band's early success. "I don't know--I don't feel 20. And I mean, this is very simple thing. We just show up and play... [Performing] is the culmination of a lot of things, a lot of living. On stage, the energy is a culmination of everything. The way you perform really depends on the way you live your life. It's not two separate things." The band's focus is on connecting with the audience rather than imparting any ideological message. "Music in its clearest and simplest form can be a catalyst to thought," says Kowalcyzk, "but that's about it. You're living in a fantasy to think that music can actually change something."

There is an immediacy to Live's performance, a connection between the band and the audience that comes simply because Live is singing to people who aren't too different from themselves. They sing about feelings of pain and confusion and anger--everything that is immediate and acute when you haven't figured out who you are or what you're supposed to be. The people they're playing to on this particular night are happily moshing teenagers and college students, most of whom don't have to worry about things like job and rent. They're therefore free to concentrate exclusively on their own emotions.

Live's songs resonate in this crowd. In "Brothers Unaware," Kowalcyzk sings "You got ten fingers, two legs, one nose/ Like me/ Just like me/ It's as simple as that/ You see/ And it I don't know who to love/ I love them all/ And if I don't know who to trust/ I trust them all." He pours his voice into the mike and what comes out of the amps is a kind of desperate inclusiveness over driving guitar riffs and hard, raw drumming.

Basically, Live is four fresh-faced guys up there on stage, blasting music wholeheartedly to their peers. They leap before they look, with a combination of intensity and vulnerabity that sends your mind reeling back to the high drama of teen angst. When Kowalcyzk sings, "Talk to me, talk to me now/Hey man you're all that I have," it's an indescribably seductive appeal to the crowd. In the middle of Live's hit single, "Operation Spirit," Kowalcyzk exhorts the audience to join in, "C'mon, you're all young. You don't have that many opinions yet! Feel it."

And they do. People lift each other up, are buoyed up onto the surface of the crowd, then sink back. Kowalcyzk steps off the stage and lolls around on the human pool, seeming to float weightlessly on his back. He grins at the teenagers who carpet his way back to the stage as he crawls over them.

And yes, it's satisfying to listen to musician who aren't multimillionaires and old enough to be your dad and still singing about being rock and roll rebels. This is Live's first big tour, and they don't seem jaded (yet). If they don't lose too much of their musical innocence, it will be interesting to hear these guys grow up on the airwaves.