April 21, 2018

The Bridge is standard, but I really like this song. Not much is going on in either the first or second Jigsaw jam, although there is a brief Tom Sawyer jam around the 15-minute mark from Magner which is neat. Magner begins the jam here with Norwegian Wood teases and/or a jam, depending on how you want to notate it. Most of this jam is as boring as the jam which preceded it. However, the last few minutes the band locks into a great groove with a 4-bar progression that works really well. Wish they had this energy the 10 minutes prior. Jigsaw features the usual drum solo. Meh. The jam out of Therapy is fantastic. This is mostly Magner-led, though Barber shines at moments as well. They take a few minutes to get out of the “rock” jam in Therapy, but eventually land on a dance jam that transitions to the Munchkin ending. This is very pretty.

The majority of the Story jam leaves me nonplussed. There are moments here (particularly after Magner drops the long, held-note which permeates the majority of this jam) that I enjoyed, but overall I was just waiting for this to end. The Astronaut jam begins with some pretty basic dance jamming from the band, though Magner includes the always unwelcome Funky Town tease. Abraxas is fine, but the jam into story features more of Magner holding a single note for what seems like 50 years. Relax. The Nughuffer story is basically one long, “Hey thanks for coming everybody.” The Nughuffer jam is nothing unusual, but it scratches an itch I like to scratch. I’m down for a dark, dirty trance jam, and that’s exactly what this is. They’re not covering any new ground, but this is nice for what it is. The I-Man > Therapy encore is a nice long encore, and better than a throwaway 4-minute song. However, neither of the I-Man jams really make this all that worth it. There are moments during the second jam that felt like they might be headed for something more interesting, but it just never got there for me.

Highlights: Therapy*, Nughuffer