March 08, 2008

This show begins with Sgt. Pepper’s followed by Tomorrow Never Knows, the latter of which has Matisyahu rambling atop it. There’s at least a jam out of Tomorrow Never Knows, though I honestly couldn’t care less about this jam. I don’t even think this is terrible, but it’s just not interesting, and generic. The Spacebird jam gets into it almost immediately with some dark, dissonant jamming. This is very cool stuff, although I think that they draw out the Crickets peak way, way too long. The Crickets jam begins as the kind of downtempo jam funk that they sometimes seem to get stuck in within these jams. They shift uptempo into a DNB jam, then back downtempo, then back uptempo again for the transition to Waves. There is a portion of this that sort of a spaced out dub feel (but a touch faster) that I thought had some potential. However, this quickly was ditched.

Memphis features a sit-in from Murph from STS9, and while this isn’t necessarily bad, it just doesn’t really move the needle at all for me. The Caves jam shifts uptempo quickly into a DNB jam, which is a little odd considering they were planning a return to Memphis. Seems the band wasn’t entirely on the same page as they wind up really, really botching the return to Memphis. As for the Caves jam itself, I actually thought as far as DNB jams go, this one is pretty solid as it’s mostly focused on the darker, grittier sound. Almost sounds like this is headed for Robots ending, but then at the last second veers back to Memphis. Weird. The second Memphis jam begins with another dissonant jam. Not sure what the deal was with the death march sound they had going on for this festival set, but I guess it’s fine. I didn’t mind this jam, and it again picks up into a dark DNB jam at some point.

There’s a short jam from Resurrection into Story, which is mostly forgettable. The Story jam begins as the typical jamfunk. Blah. Doesn’t progress much from there. Meh. The Air Song jam somehow never really feels like it gets outside of Air Song, despite being a totally different progression, melody, etc. This doesn’t do much for me. The Rock Candy jam is my favorite of this entire show. This has a dark, hypnotic groove to it that is all the work of Brownstein and Magner. Really cool stuff, with Barber showing patience that he hadn’t shown for basically the whole show. The Rockafella jam is yet another dark, dissonant jam. This begins as a downtempo dark jam and turns into an uptempo dark jam. Again, they really drill home the evil jams this show, but this one I enjoyed more than some of the others.

Highlight: Spacebird*, Caves, Rock Candy*, Rockafella