, attached to 2021-08-31

Review by heathen

heathen Set 1: Trey was really out to lunch during Forbin! He got a little bit better in Mockingbird, but was still a ways off much of the time. He got back on track in Wolfman's, which is an enjoyable version though not necessarily an all-time great version. Stash was pretty good, with moments of delightful weirdness. Weigh was fun, and fun is all it ever needs to be. They probably could've stretched out Gotta Jibboo if they had time but they obviously didn't, and it didn't seem to be headed to any new territory so I don't mind the short version. Moonage Daydream was a bit rough around the edges. It's a bold choice of covers. Altogether the first set was okay. It got off to a rocky start, but they definitely redeemed themselves with the Stash at least.

Set 2/e: Soul Planet itself is a bad song IMO. Musically boring, and the lyrics are just one cliche after another. With that out of the way, let's talk about the jam. Luckily, the song itself was out of the way by the 5 minute mark. They jump with both feet into the jam, and I really like the reverse delay or whatever it is that Trey (I think) loops at the very beginning of the jam. Fish does some really interesting rhythmic stuff as they step off the cliff and unequivocally enter Type II territory (in the neighborhood of the 8:30 mark). Trey seems to be committed to plunging into the abyss in this jam, rather than pulling the ripcord and getting on to the next Dad Rock song. As I type that, though, he tries to bring them back to Soul Planet at about the 21-ish minute mark. Dude can be a pain. Then he starts noodling towards a predictable 3.0 crescendo. If I was hearing this live, without the benefit of knowing it goes for another 20+ minutes, I'd think this jam is nearing conclusion. At about 25 minutes in Trey once again brings them back to Soul Planet, which is a shame because for a while there earlier they had some interesting stuff happening. Just when they're threatening to go into the boring "cow funk" (ugh) things get spacey again. After some more interesting stuff, things stagnate a bit and then they go into The Final Hurrah which is a lame song. Theme From the Bottom is a great song. Why can't Theme get the 40+ minute jam treatment? Axilla was notable as not having been played in a while, but the actual performance wasn't anything to write home about. Tela is a great song, and this is a pretty average version (but an average Tela is better than a lot of other songs in the current rotation). Trey flubbed the ending of Tela, for those keeping score. When, oh when, will people stop with the "Hood" response? Probably never, unfortunately. Harry Hood was sloppy at times and ultimately unremarkable. Not much to say about Fee and Wilson.

I need to listen to the Soul Planet jam at least one more time to fully form an opinion about it. As of now I can say there were some great parts, and some meh parts. How it rates as a whole is a question I don't want to rush to answer. Stash was good, and there were some decent versions of other songs. This show is going to live and die by that Soul Planet jam though, because there wasn't really anything else in the show that's memorable. A lot of the songs were just average, and some were below average.


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