April 16, 2008

Step Inside is actually jammed, which I suppose it noteworthy in and of itself. That said, this jam is mostly forgettable. Barber noodles around in a middle-eastern mode, and Magner has some cool textural stuff going on, but this really just feels like a long type 1 jam somehow (perhaps it’s Marc never leaving the Step Inside bassline). Didn’t blow my hair back. There is an extremely short jam out of Kamaole Sands into Tomorrow Never Knows. There’s a short, noodly jam back into Kamaole. Yay. The jam out of Kamaole into Astronaut is about 10 minutes long and somehow was still completely forgettable. The SITA jam is extended a good amount and features Magner using that cool “reverse” sound for a lot of it. I enjoyed this, but wish they could have extended it more still. The jam out of Astronaut into RLH features Barber doing, again, a whole lot of nothing. Magner does what he can to salvage this, but it’s just not interesting. The jam out of RLH has a few solid parts, including some nice stuff from Barber. This is nothing groundbreaking, but they at least find a really solid groove at different parts.

The 7-11 jam comes out of the “towel” section, and the first 10 minutes or so are totally unremarkable. Around the 16-minute mark, they land on something that’s marginally more interesting as the band increases in tempo. This eventually turns into Shem-Rah with a halfway decent transition. From here, basically the rest of the show is a throwaway, with the exception of a cute Shakedown Street tease from Magner before RLH ending. Most of the second set is punctuated by more Barber meandering that just never resolves to anything interesting. This was not a good show.

Highlights: Astronaut (1), RLH (1)