December 29, 2007

~ Spare Some Spice Melange ? ~

Man, this show is good but had so much potential to be great. I like the 2nd set...minus the encore. The 1st was on the edge of excellent minus some "going through tunes without stopping to smell the flowers" (the Matisyahu rap, it was just too out of sync but no foul for trying, kinda cool tho'. Big respect for doing something without a net)

Nice "One of these days" basslines from Brownie with awesome percussion in 42. This 42 is one of Big Red's best. He's a freakin' octopus on speed. Good speed. I find this 42 quite good. Crix jam was good yet muted by Matisyahu yet had amazing segments like at 8 minutes when Magner explodes into a Mach 4 synth jam to the center of the Earth. Brownie and Aucoin are on the same page here. Great version post guest spot. Pretty cool vacuum jam entering the Robots ending alongside a beautiful Barber solo. I have to give MVP honors to Mr. Mags in Astronaut. Great choices from grand piano to weird psychedelic windy sounding sweeps to train horn funk. He definitely goes off the reservation here and that's a great thing for everyone. At around 7 minutes in, Brownie....oh Brownie, plays some fucking nasty ass plucking. And to the soundman to the master of this recording...thank you! for putting that sweet bass right up front in the mix creating a universal heartbeat. Very tasty and exciting SITA jam; such audacity :) Full marks for trying the Astronomy Domine tune. Mad respect. If they had worked on this tune more and included it in the rotation more often then stretched it out, it could have been a staple. Replacing Safety Dance is an idea. Mostly joking.

The formula I enjoy the most (as many do) is the 4 or 5 tune set and no breaks. duh. Not the brightest statement but what can I say, truth is truth. Standard Shelby until the gorgeous minimal soloing by Barber towards the backdoor into Crix. His crystal clear tone and articulation is beautiful. Not boring, just less filler notes and more meat. Into the Crickets crescendo we go. Cruising along until the quadrupling of the tempo in to a Dribble-ish jam then sploosh...back down into the depths of the Zex sea for some slow and sexy vibrations. Yes, this is how Crickets is structured but huge harpsichord like sounds shake yer bones and this improv section, again, is Magner at his best. THIS IS FUNKY! But it seems for a little bit that no one is really taking the handoff from keyboard guy to jump on, create, then passing it forward. Answer? keep on grooving Mr. Magner. This part 2 of crickets is all Magner. He gets a huge roar from the crowd after this jam. So cool. Oh...he's not done....now he initiates the ending as well, both in tempo and chord change. At 12:30 it sounds like a Safety Dance suggestion but that gets squashed by Big red with a simple kick drum ninja attack.

Now we are flying in ass-first into SotW (><). The longest tune of the night. The first 5 minutes is just an ordinary jam that's nothing too exciting until we get to the ''frick turns to frack, there's no turning back'' section and away we go. Then Camp Bisco is announced. IMO, Story is one of the best Biscuits tunes when it gets inverted. There are so many that are so great but the key and speed of the song lends itself to wide open blue skies of improvisational magic alongside terrific lyrics. Magnerfique! Jam section. Mags, once again, starts it off with a cool and crunchy melting bubbling sound into a clavinet...just to get the party started ya know. I must admit there is a redundant, uninspired section after the middle for a while but them the breaks. It's just bad acid jazz to be frank. Yeah, the last half of Story is pretty average. I believe there were concentrating too heavily on the upcoming Sugarplum Fairies to be in the present moment, just an observation. 3/4 into SPF they turn on the Untz generator and high hat their way into the 42 ending. It's a pretty good ending. Short but they do spend the time well. The closing jam is very good a-typical 2007 jamming.

Set 1:: 7.10 / 10
Set 2:: 7.75 / 10
Enc: 6.20 / 10

Stay above the wicked and fly. Peace.

The 42 jam to open the show is mostly forgettable, though this gets much more interesting as it meanders into the tom heavy portion of the jam that leads into Plan B. I noted this as a highlight, though this tom section is really the only memorable part. Crickets “features” Matisyahu, but he sounds horribly out of tune, and I guess just horrible in general. This was pretty bad. The jam out of Crickets is mostly forgettable, although the segment at the end immediately prior to the Robots ending is pretty nice. Astronaut has one of my favorite SITA jams ever. This is pretty solidly type 1 the entire time, but it’s inarguably gorgeous and warrants a listen, as does the ambient dissolve out and into Astronomy Domine.

The Shelby jam goes nowhere for most of this, although the switch up into the faster trance of Crickets is well done (though I think they kinda butcher the peak here). The jam out is almost entirely forgettable. The jam out of Crickets is largely forgettable for the first several minutes. However, around the 12-minute mark they launch into some dark, digital trance. This section is fantastic, as is the soaring major key portion which comes from this as they head toward the Story peak. The jam out of Story is extremely long (20+ minutes), but that’s basically all it has going for it. There are a couple notable items here (Barber on MIDI keyboard, Allen with thirst quenchers), and Magner has some great lines littered throughout. That said, this was mostly filler, and given how long it is, it just was too mediocre for too long to really warrant any sort of relisten. The Sugar Plums jam back into 42 is pretty forgettable. The 7-11 encore features a short, jambandy “towel” jam and a short trance jam into Wizards in Winter. This song is just not a great fit for TDB, and I don’t know why they ever attempted it. Meh.

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