A tragic song doesn’t necessarily have to be a slow song. Lakini’s Juice always felt like a song rooted in utter destruction, which I’ve always understood being self-control. Once there’s no barrier, wanton overwhelms our protagonist.

The video seems to confirm it and I know a few places banned it. The busybody pearl clutchers from Threads would probably do so!

Yup, still angry at them for censoring my Those Darlins write-up!

As many of my generation, I found Live through the trifecta of I alone, Lightning Crashes, and Selling the drama. Those three songs sold me the band right away, and Throwing Copper still does the rounds on my stereo. It’s such a perfect album, and Pillar of Davidson is simply one of those songs that takes you to a certain special time. In my case, it wasn’t such a good one, but that’s how it goes.

When Lakini’s Juice was on constant rotation, I was in a relationship of sorts. We never got to the stage depicted on the video, but I guess it was on our minds. It didn’t work beyond the “test drive” stage for both of us, I’m afraid, so we parted as friends instead. Oddly enough, I don’t particularly link the song to that relationship, and I’m more intrigued at the interpretation. Web searches will yield this and that theory and I guess it’s one of those “make of it what you will” sorta situation.

Secret Samadhi wasn’t as successful as Throwing Copper and not a single album afterwards would reach the heights. Add to that Ed Kowalczyk less than noble treatment of his band members and maybe their short lifespan is more internal strife than a failure to connect to their generation. They managed to do so for a couple of albums, though.

-Sam J. Valdés López