10/6/00 - Friday, The Sanctuary - Las Vegas, NV

https://archive.org/details/db2000-10-06.mk21.flac16/

"We booked this place because it's the only room in Las Vegas that doesn't have a slot machine somewhere inside the building." - Barber

The first show of the storied fall tour opens with a drawn out groove-oriented jam, punctuated every so often with some more dnb influenced flourishes from Sammy. He keeps these flourishes up even as the rest of the band is firmly in M.E.M.P.H.I.S., which creates a cool effect. The main jam in M.E.M.P.H.I.S. covers a ton of ground. It begins as a very typical M.E.M.P.H.I.S. jam, perhaps even more Barber-dominated than usual. Around the ten minute mark Barber and Magner lock up for a pretty cool theme, which follows its course until Sammy shifts to a four on the floor trance beat around 11:40. The rest of the band takes a little time to adjust their course, but around 12:30-13:00 they begin to develop a fantastic and sinister trance theme. Around 14:20 Sammy shifts the direction towards jungle, and the rest of the band follow suit. The peak feels very sudden, as the rest of the band is still in dnb mode, but the jam is fantastic overall. The outro jam is a jungle vehicle pretty much all the way through, until it breaks down almost completely around the 26 minute mark, giving way to a Bazaar Escape intro. Bazaar is played jamless, but serves as an excellent landing pad to a M.E.M.P.H.I.S. that is 30 some minutes long. The Biscuits debut of Grass is Green follows, and the jam section is notably different from the Electron version not two months prior. Sammy lays down a house beat not unlike a standard Mr. Don or Basis jam, and Magner develops and holds a very simple, tense repeating theme: quintessential fall 2000. Around the seven minute mark Barber takes the lead and builds very gradually to the song’s ending. The Very Moon, like the earlier M.E.M.P.H.I.S., is a banner version. Coming on the heels of the wildly exploratory 8/19/00 version, this Very Moon first jam stretches even further beyond the limits of the song. Nearly nine minutes long, the jam makes a deep dive into sinister trance territory, sounding at moments like the best B&C jams of 1999, until about the nine minute mark when it begins to build to a profoundly weird crescendo that slowly transforms into Very Moon territory. Truly excellent stuff. After such a groundbreaking jam, a funk jam that segues into Voices seems almost pedestrian, and it isn’t quite the same level, but it manages to cover some interesting territory, with a very cool haunting trance theme that builds from about 17:00 until about 23:30 or so when the jam begins to break down into a Voices intro. The remainder of the set isn’t terribly interesting. Voices has that typical spacey fall 1999-fall 2000 style jam, but there are more interesting iterations of it later in the year, and Pat & Dex is played about as standard as can be.

The second set consists entirely of one long palindrome segment, the fourth ever played by the band. On paper it definitely looks like the meatier set, but on closer examination most of the segues seem very safe (with the exception of Sven > Run Like Hell and Run Like Hell > Sven). In execution, the set more or less lived up to that expectation. The Unspoken Rhyme jam is pretty tense, staid dnb. Around the eleven minute mark there is the slightest of tempo shifts as the jam moves into Svenghali, but, unsurprisingly, the jam does not have to go far to get there. The Svenghali jam is a bit more interesting from the get-go. It begins as another tense dnb vehicle, but doesn’t spend much time there. By the five minute mark the jam has entered a steady mellow groove passage, almost like a M.E.M.P.H.I.S. jam. Magner leads, and crafts some gorgeous melancholic lines, until the jam breaks down completely around 9:15. The jam builds back up into a clear Run Like Hell intro, with some great thematic Barber lines along the way. The jam is solid, but the drop into Run Like Hell doesn’t quite have the same payoff as the best versions from the era. Run Like Hell is jammed out of the first verse. The jam quickly enters a kind of blissful dub-ish groove, perhaps more in keeping with a typical Story jam, but quickly returns to a steady trance rhythm. The jam builds to a pretty decent Story ending, although like with the Run Like Hell the peak comes suddenly. The Story jam is focused from the start; the band doesn’t really deviate from the driving trance theme they create, but it’s very well done. It builds up to a much more satisfying Run Like Hell peak than the first one. Run Like Hell leaves the rock groove behind after only a few short minutes, developing into a beautiful dnb theme. It’s a pretty monolithic build to Svenghali, but, like the Story jam, is executed well enough that it’s hard to complain. The Svenghali outro is very short, but has some great symphonic moments from Magner going back into The Unspoken Rhyme. The Dribble encore is very good; the theme creeps steadily towards bliss, reined in every so often by Sammy’s and Brownstein’s Dribble hits. Around the eight minute mark the band segues into The Big Happy, the simple song progression that would form the basis of Highwire and I Remember When. It is not notated, but it is distinctly fleshed out. Despite the extra composition in the middle there is still plenty of meat on this Dribble jam.

The first set is considerably more interesting to me, despite its appearance on paper. The second set, while more fluid, is also more straightforward and linear. Highlights below.

Highlights:

The Very Moon

The second very impressive Very Moon first jam in a row. This one kicks the crap out of the 8/19/00 version. Completely type two in just about every sense of the word.

M.E.M.P.H.I.S.

This can include the intro jam as well, which is drawn out and interesting, but I am specifically talking about the main jam. M.E.M.P.H.I.S. jams in 1999 were generally very interesting, but more or less always followed a similar script. This could be argued to be the very first type two M.E.M.P.H.I.S. jam, with shades of dnb and dark trance present throughout.

M.E.M.P.H.I.S. -> Bazaar

M.E.M.P.H.I.S. was three for three tonight. The outro jam isn’t quite as exploratory as the main jam, but it’s a solid dnb outfit (rare for a M.E.M.P.H.I.S. outro) and it breaks down beautifully into a Bazaar intro.

Svenghali -> Run Like Hell

My highlight from the palindrome set, and the only jam that didn’t sound more or less exactly how I imagined it would sound based on the setlist. The groovy breakdown in the middle is more akin to a Story intro or a M.E.M.P.H.I.S. jam than either of the two songs on the setlist.

Story -> Run Like Hell

Not particularly exploratory, but fantastic execution and thrilling conclusion.

Stray Observations:

This show features the Biscuits debut of Grass is Green, the full-band debut of Unspoken Rhyme, and the first Pat & Dex since 10/28/99.

This is the first Grass is Green to feature the bonus lyric “I guess the only question left is who’s the city boy?”

After Grass is Green, Barber thanks everyone for coming out to Vegas. He says they booked the Sanctuary because it’s the only venue in town that doesn’t have a slot machine, but adds, having realized that it was a bad decision, that they will have slot machines brought in so people have something to do during the shows. His burrito story is excellent.

This is the fourth Biscuits palindrome.

This is the first inverted Story of the World.

This show was the westernmost tour opener in tDB history, a title previously held by State College, PA. It was also the first Biscuits tour to open with a two night run at the same venue or in the same city.

This is the first of only two shows played at The Sanctuary, a small theater connected to the more famous Huntridge Theater, a famous historical theater in old Vegas.

—Mr. Zan