August 15, 2007

Safety Dance is jamless, and Trucker’s Choice has nothing worth relistening to. The first Spaga jam is a very unique Spaga first jam. Rather than the usual DNB, they drop almost immediately into a half-time breakbeat jam. This has a great, airy feel to it, and Magner’s note choice and patch choice are both wonderful. Pretty much everything before the dance jam commences is perfect. After this, however, they lose a lot of steam. Honestly, there are about 9 full minutes of straight-up filler here which did not need to take place. Abraxas jam back into Spaga is fine. Not a whole lot that I found noteworthy. The last jam in Spaga at least gets outside of its usual type 1 jam, and while Barber doesn’t do much in this jam, Magner is all-around fantastic, and carries the jam. I'm not sure this is enough to save the jam from mundanity, but it's at least better than the usual, straightforward type 1 jam.

Onamae Wa develops into a full-blown jam, a relative rarity, and the resulting jam is truly fantastic. The segment around 3:00 on the Crickets track in particular features wonderful, patient, thematic work from Magner, with Brownstein leading the changes here. Magner's play here reminds me a bit (stylistically, not melodically) of the beloved 10/26/07 Hot Air Balloon jam. This is easily the highlight of the night for me. The jam out of Crickets get a little more “jammy” than I’m typically looking for, but even this has a great groove to it that kept me bobbing my head, and the band just feels locked in.

I’ve seen some look back on this show as an example of a worse 2007 show, but I thoroughly enjoyed this show.

Highlights: Spaga (1), Oname Wa**, Crickets