July 14, 2018

Honky Tonk Sound One is…gross. 1999 has a decent jam in it. Nothing to write home about, but not bad either. I really did not expect to love this Pilin jam as much as I did. I typically hate Pilin it High(er) jams, but this one is a marked exception. At the 8:40 mark, Brownstein adds in a second chord to his previously boring riff, and this goes up about 50 notches. Magner has some wonderful leads through the rest of this jam, and the entire band manages to sync up, which is somewhat rare in their DNB jams. Good god this Memphis is just…terrible. Please, never again. And jamless. Thanks guys. Buddha is solid. Nothing revolutionary going on, but some nice e-drums from Allen and interesting patches from Magner. Abraxas > Dribble > Confrontation in 14 minutes sounds like garbage to me. And this is not that enjoyable. It’s just a few minutes of jamming, and nothing of note here.

The HAB has a several-minutes long, very obvious HAB jam. This is just okay. Around the 14-minute mark, the band shifts into an obvious Gangster intro jam. I think both of these jams are solid, even if they’re very, very safe playing. Well-played, but safe. The Gangster jam is less interesting, though they do the same playing-it-safe style jam. The WLTP jam is enormous. It begins with Magner playing an awesome arp. This just gets cooler from here. This is all Magner, and later on, all Barber. Really great stuff from everybody, and as good as the Pilin from earlier in the show.

The Waves jam is interesting in that they begin with a pretty prototypical jam. When I see Waves > Crickets, there is a particular way I expect it to sound, and the first few minutes are exactly that. However, around the 7-8 minute mark, they add in a bunch of piano from Magner and Barber’s playing is a little cleaner as well. This sounds a lot more like a stereotypical jamband, and not necessarily what I’d expect from a Waves > Crickets. Neat. The Crickets jam is relatively short and relatively uninteresting. The Minions jam has some fun melodic stuff from Magner, but they never really develop this enough to scratch my itch. The Orch Theme jams have the same issues. Magner tries to drag them to something interesting but it just never happens.

This Basis intro is paltry, at best. There’s a short middle jam here, but it barely even counts as a jam. However, the second jam here is very good. Magner has some really solid leads that are interesting, danceable, and play off of the overall vibe of the jam very well.

Highlights: Pilin**, Buddha, HAB, WLTP**, Waves, Basis