3/26/99 - Friday, The Blind Pig, Ann Arbor, MI

Today's 21st anniversary recap highlights an underappreciated show. The penultimate show of winter tour 1999 has always lived in the shadow of the next night's barn burner, but it has plenty of merit and is replete with highlights. Presented below is my write-up and review of the show. Enjoy

Score: 3/5

Highlights: I-Man > Shimmy, Vassilios > Shem-Rah Boo, Ape > I-Man, Helicopters

https://archive.org/details/db1999-03-26.flac

📷: Josh Altman

The Morph jam starts off as a very minimalistic and mellow Morph jam, gradually meandering into noodly trance territory. As Sammy moves the jam towards Shem-Rah Boo, Brownie dedicates the “next bit” to Carla’s birthday. The Shem jam starts out nice and trancey but begins sounding like a Vassilios intro very early on. Despite giving away the mark, it’s a pretty great jam, patient and eerie, although it does drag in places and the drop into Vassilios is badly botched. Vassilios jam, however, is fantastic. It starts off in traditional ambient trance, but builds quickly on a chaotic Barber-led theme midway through the jam. The jam builds in triumphant intensity as it gradually reaches Shem territory. The peak is a flawlessly executed capstone to the excellent jam. A solid MOTH MOTY finishes the set.

Helicopters is a great version. It gets into deep space a bit in the middle, with Magner making excellent use of the rabbit hole synths, and builds up to a ferocious conclusion. The band seems to lose control of the beast they’ve created; the ending goes off the rails a bit and the peak comes out of nowhere. Bit of a weird placement for a short Eulogy, but a nice breather until we get to the big segment. Ape gets off to a very patient start, with Barber playing a very simple riff and Magner accompanying on the piano. At about 10 minutes they find a very nice groove that’s almost a slowed-down Ape ending jam, which they break down around 14 minutes and sort of peter down to an I-Man intro. The jam is solid overall, even if it never got into raging trance or DnB, but the segue could have been better executed. The jam out of I-Man starts off in Magner-led Blissco and culminates in dark Barber shredding. It’s the final Shimmy of the tour, and it might just be the apotheosis of the recent bliss themed Shimmies (so far). It’s hard to timestamp a highlight, but 10:30 to about 14 might be it. This is a seriously fantastic jam, and out of the first jam in I-Man no less. Shimmy has a pretty cool vocal outro jam, but the show falls off pretty significantly after this: the Shimmy outro quickly becomes a standard I-Man middle with a standard jam into the ending of I-Man, which quickly outros into a pretty standard Morph ending. On top of all this, the Overture encore is jamless, which feels like a cheap cop out after the recent spate of jammed Overtures.

📷: Unknown

3/5.  Another almost 4. I-man >Shimmy is the clear highlight.  Vassillios > Shem-Rah is excellent.  Helicopters and Ape are both solid and worth a couple spins, and Shem-Rah > Vassillios is probably worth at least one.

Stray Observations:
Magner is definitely teasing something at 21:48 in Vassilios but I’m not sure what.
This is the first Shimmy outro jam.
I’m pretty sure this is the last jamless Overture, excluding the weird medley version from the 06 Hammerstein show. Could be wrong.