Which was Live's best year? Options

[dangum]

Which year in Live's history would you consider to be their best (or your favourite)? You can base it on the music produced that year, the publicity received, awards given, albums sold, online interactivity, touring locations etc. or any other metric you like.

[JonSnow]

Any year prior to the year 2000, apparently. It looks like Y2K took down something after all.

[dangum]

1997 would have to be the high point in Live's career. In 1997, Live released an album, toured the world, appeared on numerous high profile TV shows and completed an entire album cycle.

Let's look at the highlights:

Album: released in my opinion an album that is in their top 3. Debuted at #1. 227,000 copies sold in the first week (who remembers the Straight Outta Champaign website who proudly had this fact on their homepage?). This was the last album that didn't suffer from leaks and where fans all heard it for the first time at the same time.

Singles: Three singles released, all three came with high quality music videos. Live even found the time to create a video for Ghost that wasn't released until years later. Thanks Swami!

Tour: The band started with theatre shows in the US and Europe, moved onto sold out arenas in Australia, back to Europe for a few festival shows then finished with amphitheater shows in the US. Over 120 concerts. Although setlists were rather static, this tour did include some memorable shows. In Melbourne, Live played their longest set ever (for the time).

Media: The band performed on TV shows such as Letterman, Jay Leno, Saturday Night Live and Much Music. These shows were events where millions watched.

Internet: This was the time of fan sites. There were multiple places fans could hang out (Live-Web, SOY mailing list, the list run by Stijn). Live had one of the leading edge web sites with video, photo and audio content. Ed had his edko.org site that contained a tour diary that was updated regularly.

In conclusion, although Live may have excelled in certain areas in different years - 1997 was the standout year for me.