June 09, 2001

The soundcheck features a “jam” around a groovy riff that was apparently the basis of, or later reworked into, Hibbage. Neat for historical reasons, although not super interesting to hear otherwise. The Jigsaw is a monster version. The pre-chase jam is possibly the longest yet, on par with 11/9/00, with some tempo changes to keep things interesting. The Jigsaw “trance” jam is kind of odd. It’s a bit slower and looser than a typical Jigsaw trance, and at around the 11 minute mark the band seems to be heading toward the ending before playing another chase riff. Odd and surprisingly short. The “dub” jam is the longest of the three, and very quickly departs from the traditional Jigsaw melancholia into a blissco passage. Shortly after 15:30, the beat shifts towards trance and the mood darkens slightly. It builds up steadily to a Helicopters intro. The jam out of Helicopters settles into a gorgeous theme immediately. It is fantastic while it lasts, which seems woefully short to me. The theme breaks down, and the jam treads water for a bit before building up to a glorious rock god Barber crescendo that settles into Jigsaw Earth. They play the chase section again (I’m pretty sure this would be considered “extra” for the song in 01, but I’m not entirely sure they didn’t do it that way other times). The dub jam in Jigsaw is short and standard, but peaks strongly. After this excellent sandwich, the show kind of falls off. The Plan B is disappointingly standard after the paradigm-shifting version from 5/2. The debut of the cover Three Days follows. It’s pretty composition heavy, and the jam is really just a Barber shred-fest, but I have such a soft spot for this cover. The Shimmy jam shifts to bliss pretty quickly, it leads to a pretty cool Barber-heavy transition into Floes, but overall isn’t terribly interesting. Floes has that long mid-verse deconstruction of which I’m not very fond. This one breaks down into an almost drum solo, punctuated by occasional ambient instrumentation. This actually leads the band into some interesting jamming (more interesting than we ever get from this section) and it’s a shame that the band feels compelled to return to Floes. After this, the main jam in Floes is disappointingly truncated and way too shreddy.

2/5. The Jigsaw segment is pretty interesting front to back and scrapes an extra star for the show, but just about everything that follows can be skipped.

Stray Observations: This show features the beginnings of what would become Hibbage. This was a one set performance for a “Rock The Vote” benefit. The Mighty Mighty Bosstones opened, which is very amusing to me. Loud boos after Brownie tells the crowd that the band moved to California.