The Alternative Number Ones: Live’s “Lakini’s Juice”

In The Alternative Number Ones, I’m reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones. The column is now biweekly, alternating with The Number Ones on Mondays.

I saw Live twice in the '90s. My story is not unique. Live played a great many shows during the '90s. They toured hard, and they ended up on a lot of festival bills. If you were even halfway interested in alternative rock during that decade, and you were at an age where you were going to see live music, and maybe even especially if you were at an age where you were starting going to see live music, then you could've easily seen Live multiple times. You could've seen Live multiple times without even intentionally going to see Live. You could just be at a music festival, and bam, there's Live. My two accidental Live music-festival experiences were four years apart, and they were very different from one another.

The first time I saw Live, it was summer 1994, and I was 14 years old. Live had just landed their first alt-rock chart-topper with "Selling The Drama," but they weren't really famous yet. They played early in the afternoon on the main stage at Peter Gabriel's WOMAD Festival, which had all these international musicians whose names didn't even make it into the show's newspaper listing. Live were big enough to be in the newspaper, but they were on the bill below Gabriel, Midnight Oil, and Arrested Development. Fruitopia sponsored this festival. I saw the slam poet from the beginning of Higher Learning perform in a tent. This was my second concert ever, and it was the most 1994 thing you can imagine.