No Doubt - Live in the Tragic Kingdom (1997)

For today's Live Performance we turn to Gwen Stefani and her mates in No Doubt.

Live in the Tragic Kingdom is a video release by the American third wave ska band No Doubt, consisting of a filmed concert at The Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim in Anaheim, California on May 31, and June 1, 1997. It supported their commercially successful third studio album, Tragic Kingdom. It was released on November 11, 1997 on Interscope Records on VHS; November 25, 2003 on DVD as part of No Doubt's box set album Boom Box; and as a separate DVD on June 13, 2006. The DVD was given a "Parental Advisory: Explicit Content" sticker in the United States, but came in a "clean" version.


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Background
No Doubt released their debut album, No Doubt, in 1992, one year after being signed to Interscope Records. No Doubt was a commercial flop, selling only 30,000 copies. Interscope did not trust that the band would fund a second album, and paired them with producer Matthew Wilder. Keyboardist Eric Stefani was distressed by the band's lack of success, and the fact that he had to give up creative control to someone outside the band; and soon left the band in late 1994 to pursue an animation career on the popular TV series The Simpsons. No Doubt released and recorded their second studio album, The Beacon Street Collection, independently. Despite its limited availability, it sold over 100,000 copies within a year of its release, and convinced Interscope that they would fund a successful third album.

No Doubt's third studio album, Tragic Kingdom, was released on October 10, 1995 and spawned seven singles, including "Just a Girl"; "Spiderwebs"; "Excuse Me Mr."; "Sunday Morning"; and "Don't Speak", which reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed there for sixteen weeks, a record at the time which was later broken by the Goo Goo Dolls' "Iris". The album sold sixteen million copies worldwide. Because of the success of Tragic Kingdom, No Doubt decided to embark on a tour in support of the album.

Tour
No Doubt embarked on a tour called the "Tragic Kingdom World Tour", beginning in 1997, two years after the release of Tragic Kingdom. They expected to tour for two months, but the tour ended up lasting two and a half years.

The band chose Project X, headed by Luc Lafortune and Michael Keeling, to design the stage for the series of concerts. The band suggested decorating the stage like a clearing in a forest. Project X created three anthropomorphic trees with glowing oranges, as a reference to the music video of "Don't Speak". The show included clear and mylar confetti designed to look like rain. Lighting design was difficult because there were only four rehearsals, so the show was arranged to be flexible to allow for what Lafortune referred to as "a very kinetic performance."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_in_the_Tragic_Kingdom