The opening segment of this show looks pretty spectacular on paper. Mr. Don, the first of the year, opens, and the band sounds pretty cohesive in the composed section. The jam that emerges is pleasantly atmospheric and mellow. Sammy keeps things on cruise control for the first half, allowing Barber and Magner to craft a blissful melody, but the Professor begins to mess around at the eleven minute mark, adding elements of chaos to the jam. Shortly after the band settles into a more tense theme, calling to mind at points a Shem-Rah Boo ending. After another breakdown, in a moment of some apparent confusion, Sammy shifts to a more breakbeat style of playing, and the other two stumble a bit but catch up nicely. The rest of the track is an atmospheric jungle jam, breaking down, in the first minutes of the Widow track, into almost ambient guitar and piano over Sammy’s breakbeat. Barber sings the first verse of Widow over the breakbeats, creating a cool effect that, to my knowledge, was not done again. The Mr. Don jam is excellent and absolutely worth hearing, and this unique debut is only the icing on top. After an instrumental bridge, Barber yells “let’s sing it again,” and they do that, this time performing the song in the more traditional style. The end of Widow features a bluesy solo from Barber, before breaking down into ambient bliss. The jam into Unspoken Rhyme stays mellow and blissful the whole way. I definitely expected it to go jungle, but I liked what they did with it just the same. The keyboard peak of Unspoken Rhyme is played pretty early and hesitantly, and the band spends a few measures building it up before singing the ending chorus. There is the shortest of pauses between the end and the beginning in which a count can be heard, but its inversion is impressive nevertheless, especially considering that this was only the second performance of Unspoken Rhyme and only the third song to ever be inverted. The jam out of Rhyme is a pretty short rock groove that leads into a comparatively drawn out Story intro. The Story jam is probably the most distinctly Biscuits sounding jam of the night so far. It begins as a Barber-dominated trance-rock jam, but around the twelve minute mark Barber takes a backseat to Magner, who crafts an infectiously catchy theme over Barber’s grooves. The two deliver a much-needed energetic peak to cap off this relatively mellow segment. After Story, Sammy moves over to bass and Mauricio comes in for the second ever Crickets. The first jam is great atmospheric driving trance, but, as with pretty much all the Mauricio jams, it doesn’t have a satisfying peak. In fact, the band seems to lose steam rather than build it as they go into the peak. As with the debut, the funk jam is more interesting to me than the “main” jam (if it was even considered the main jam back then), possibly just because that style was so much more compatible with Mauricio’s. I found myself liking the Crickets debut a lot better than the sophomore effort.
The second set opens with the first Above the Waves of the year. The Waves jam unfolds like a standard early 1999 version, a tense trance jam that approaches Waves ending territory but gradually becomes more blissful until a crescendo shortly before the thirteen minute mark. Here the jam breaks down and slides smoothly into a Crystal Ball intro. I had expected Crystal Ball to be unfinished just based on the setlist, but it’s actually a pretty concise full version, with the majority of the track taken up by the outro jam that brings things steadily back into Waves. It’s a nice mellow build with a red hot peak, but overall nothing all that remarkable. Looking at the setlist and seeing Voices, I was dreading a potential Mauricio sit-in, and the banter track after Waves confirmed my fears. I have no idea why they would try this song with this configuration again after the mediocre first attempt, but try it they did. I’m far from the biggest fan of Voices generally, and with Mauricio the song just does less than nothing for me. After Voices the band brings up guest bassist Bill Stites for the remainder of the show. For a guest bassist, Overture is a fairly complex choice. Our guest handles the composition with aplomb, and the jam, though somewhat short and maybe not groundbreaking, is better than anything done with Mauricio in this show. The Magellan encore is solidly well-played but standard.
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| Barber and Bill Stites, bassist for a day. (discobiscuits.net) |
I don’t know if it’s the charm of the uniqueness wearing off, or just simply diminishing returns, but this show didn’t do as much for me as the past Triscuits shows. There were plenty of highlights though, some of them breathtaking, which are delineated below:
Highlights:
Mr. Don > Widow in the Rain
The first jam of the show is probably the best. It covers tremendous ground and multiple distinct themes before segueing into the debut of Widow in the Rain.
Story of the World
The second version is at least as strong as the first, beginning as a funky Barber-led jam and developing into an excellent trance jam with a soaring Barber peak.
Waves > Crystal Ball
It starts off as a fairly standard Waves jam but builds up to a sweet bliss peak before breaking down and segueing into Crystal Ball.
Overture
An impressive performance of a challenging song from a one-off guest bassist.
Stray Observation:
This is the first inversion of Unspoken Rhyme, and only the second ever played. It is the first new inversion of 2000, and the only inversion debuted in the Triscuits era.
Before the Magellan encore, Barber mentions that it’s a certain song’s birthday and that they were going to play it. Magellan was first played 4/22/98, so that checks out, but it made me think back to a 1999 show where Brownie said that it was Magellan’s birthday but they weren’t going to play it. I assumed he was talking about the explorer (whose birthday is unknown), but I checked, and sure enough that show was 4/22/99. It never occurred to me that Brownie could be talking about the song.
—Andy
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