Troy
12-12-2005, 10:09 AM
Saw them saturday night. While I have one album by them (Anchor Drops) and I like some of it a lot, I didn't really consider myself much of a fan. Still, I felt like going out and seeing some music.
At the gig I was talking to some people right down front before the show started and it seemed like almost everybody had seen this band at least 5 times. There were 2 guys that claimed 100+ shows. Clearly, I was out of my league WRT my UM knowledge. Told them I was just an old-school progboy and they smiled sublimely and warned me to prepare to have my head ripped off.
I think saddling this 6 piece band with the "jam-band" monnicker is a mistake. They clearly are influenced by pretty much any and everything. The prog influences are obvious with their bizarre tonal sense and ability to play in freakish time and stop and start on a dime. But they grooved too. At times they sounded like War or the AWB. They did an hilarious Rockabilly song that morphed into a heavy metal thing with Rockabilly overtones. Spacerock, CSNY tinged harmonizing, Santana style latin rock, Wall of Voodoo-ish new wave lo-rent buzzing and beeping. They even played a straight up cover of "Little Drummer Boy" in view of the holiday season. They covered a LOT of bases and didn't take any missteps with any of them. Extremely tight and well rehearsed band.
Seems like about 25% of the gig was improvised with lots of hand gestures and eyecontact going on. The band likes to work straight from their repitoire of songs and head off into tangents and bring it around to new songs. Nothing new (though much of the audience acted as if UM was the only band to ever do this), but still, it was done very well for the most part. A couple of the jams fell flat, especially in the second set. I think they are much better when they work more structured.
Of note also was the covers. Before the gig, the crowd warned me that they always play a couple of covers from their huge list of songs. On this night they played an unbelievably rousing cover of Pink Floyd's "In The Flesh" that had the audience in an absolute frenzy. Great buzz-saw guitar sound, very powerful. They also did a fantastic job with Led Zep's "Song Remains the Same." Smoking and tight.
Great gig.
At the gig I was talking to some people right down front before the show started and it seemed like almost everybody had seen this band at least 5 times. There were 2 guys that claimed 100+ shows. Clearly, I was out of my league WRT my UM knowledge. Told them I was just an old-school progboy and they smiled sublimely and warned me to prepare to have my head ripped off.
I think saddling this 6 piece band with the "jam-band" monnicker is a mistake. They clearly are influenced by pretty much any and everything. The prog influences are obvious with their bizarre tonal sense and ability to play in freakish time and stop and start on a dime. But they grooved too. At times they sounded like War or the AWB. They did an hilarious Rockabilly song that morphed into a heavy metal thing with Rockabilly overtones. Spacerock, CSNY tinged harmonizing, Santana style latin rock, Wall of Voodoo-ish new wave lo-rent buzzing and beeping. They even played a straight up cover of "Little Drummer Boy" in view of the holiday season. They covered a LOT of bases and didn't take any missteps with any of them. Extremely tight and well rehearsed band.
Seems like about 25% of the gig was improvised with lots of hand gestures and eyecontact going on. The band likes to work straight from their repitoire of songs and head off into tangents and bring it around to new songs. Nothing new (though much of the audience acted as if UM was the only band to ever do this), but still, it was done very well for the most part. A couple of the jams fell flat, especially in the second set. I think they are much better when they work more structured.
Of note also was the covers. Before the gig, the crowd warned me that they always play a couple of covers from their huge list of songs. On this night they played an unbelievably rousing cover of Pink Floyd's "In The Flesh" that had the audience in an absolute frenzy. Great buzz-saw guitar sound, very powerful. They also did a fantastic job with Led Zep's "Song Remains the Same." Smoking and tight.
Great gig.