November 04, 2006

This Jigsaw is bizarre. Barber begins the song with the normal lyrics up through “Gaia still loves all the pieces of her Jigsaw Earth,” but then things get weird. From there, they skip the “Jacob left in the dark of night” verse altogether, and sing the “Jacob sat on empty,” verse. Then Barber starts making up lyrics. The rest of them are as follows:

People they talk plenty People they act up People say the strangest things Just so you think they’re tough Imagine if I could look at them straighter through Gaia makes and laughs so confusing, they don’t know what to do

[Normal chorus]

Jacob sat on empty Sandibel got tied up The people in his head talked so much He thought he was screwed up I told him, “Dude, you got no problems” He looked at me and said, “Yo dude, do you have a spittoon?”

[Normal chorus]

As far as the jams, the first jam is very, very good. This almost sounds like what could have spawned the idea for Lunar Pursuit. Magner hits some very Lunar-y chords around the 10:00 mark. The second jam stays pretty solidly inside the typical Jigsaw “chase” structure for quite a while, but this has such a great pocket that I don’t necessarily care all that much. Near the end of the second jam they develop a great build, with Magner playing some great harmonies off of Barber’s leads. Very good stuff. I’m going to count the “drum jam” as a jam, although I could not care less about this. The first Memphis jam is very solid. This is all Barber, crafting some really interesting riffs, and later Buckets plays off of Barber for a few measures in a neat way. I am not a fan of the original Pilin, nor do I care about this “rocky” jam that goes nowhere. Both Liquid Handcuffs and Crystal Ball have short type 1 jams to end the set.

The Astronaut to begin the second set has a short SITA jam. The second jam that follows is very, very good. This is thematic and interesting, and there’s some great hookups here between Magner and Barber. The jam out of the end of Astronaut turns into a Moshi-Fameus jam with Buckets as well. This has an absolutely hypnotic groove for most of it, and this kept me extremely engaged throughout. Well done, all involved, and the segue into Gamma Goblins is flawless. The jam out of Gamma Goblins into Basis doesn’t do a whole lot for me. This isn’t bad by any means, but this is just far too similar to 100 other Basis intros that you’ve heard. This turns into a swirling peak of psychedelia at the end, but the peak is the most interesting part of the jam, by a large margin. The Basis second jam is pretty solid overall. This begins as a straightforward dance jam and morphs into a middle-eastern sounding dance jam near the end that sounds like it could be headed for the end of Shimmy, before veering back toward Basis’ ending. Pinball Wizard and TVM encore are three jams that sound like generic jamband stuff. Meh.

Highlights: Jigsaw (1**, 2*), Memphis (1), Astronaut (2**, 3**)