May 28, 2006

I wanted to like this Spectacle so much. This is a 10-minute intro jam, which seems like it’d be something I would love. Unfortunately, this is just a lot of pretty forgettable playing. The Story and Buddha jams that follow are in the same vein, though the Buddha jam has a neat little AC2B tease from Brownstein. Overture here is basically one long Robots fakeout. Meh.

I don’t care about this Reactor at all. Skip. The Astronaut on the other hand is very cool. The first jam features an extended SITA section. I believe this is the most they’ve extended this with Allen so far, and they get outside the type 1 structure a bit here. The second jam starts with a spacey dance jam. This gradually gets weirder and weirder, and the band clearly has no qualms with allowing this to stretch out into a cacophony of dissonance before reconciling at the Astronaut peak. Marvelous. Step Inside is jamless. 42 has a RLH tease immediately at the start of the jam. The jam itself is really cool. This is a very Magner-heavy jam, and he has some phenomenal leads here. Dance party central. Scott Metzger sits in for Pinball Wizard, which is a neat novelty but features no real jam, nor does IRW, nor does Rock and Roll Fantasy.

Highlights: Astronaut (1, 2**), 42**