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Picking these guys back up, I am finding on this 15th anniversary show a bit more straightforward rock than I was expecting. Sure there’s a lot of jamming and the songs certainly run long, but this is overall a more in your face melting brand of that than noodling. The band’s got a ton of energy and their chemistry as a group is pretty undeniable here, particulalrly on the standout Ocean Billy, moments of big rawk interspersed with dexterous interplay. The mashup in the second set of The Talking Heads’ Life During Wartime and Bob Marley’s Exodus is great fun as well.
Playing off elements of reggae, soul, jazz, and rock, Mihali and co. were largely a high octane group of guys that you can really feel the energy coming off the stage on this one. Though they play really well together, the vocals sound something like Blues Traveler mixed with Counting Crows but not as good as either, making the jams the real story here. And in that, they bring it in spades. Jamflownan feels like the song to know, though that instrumental performance, Classical Gas, is the best thing I think here.
Gary Clark Jr. is a curious case for me. Part Albert King, part Hendrix, and part Texas blues, his emergence at the Crossroads Festival in 2010 get many excited for him as the next generation of great guitar hero. In 2012, he released Blak and Blu, but instead of that album serving as an arrival, it was instead a disjointed, mediocre, and over polished album that as quickly turned folks off of him. An immediate abandonment of the roots of his initial influences. The first step in course correction, to me, was this live album, a chance to hear what he sounded like with the varnish stripped and playing hard blues in a band. For the most part, the performances are exceptional as they extend, demonstrating the raw power his guitar paired with his voice can bring. There’s a sense, as there often is when you see him live, that the rest of the band is essentially along for the ride, but it can be a helluva ride when he is at his best - here with an extended Bright Lights, and his falsetto delivery and guitar pairing on the ballad Please Come Home. There are other highlights to be sure - his ripping cover of Catfish Blues, When My Train Pulls In, Travis County, and the muddy but wonderful Numb. This probably was his moment, given that subsequent releases are really too few and far between (This Land is a fantastic album but it’s been 5 years already!).
The Essential Performance: Bright Lights, Please Come Home
Up Next: Gov’t Mule - Dark Side of the Mule (Deluxe Edition)
Released in ‘14, but played Halloween night 2008, Gov’t Mule played two full sets, the first of which is predominantly cut from their typical set lists. For that set, Brand New Angel, Gameface, the St. Stephen jam, Monkey Hill, and the instrumental Kind of Bird are all great highlights, and a band clearly in top form. After a brief break, the second set is one of the great sets of this journey, with Gov’t Mule “dressed up” as a Pink Floyd cover band (hence the title). All of it pretty phenomenal (though a few of the vocal moments in Great Gig in the Sky are painful), as they roll through classics like Fearless and Shine On You Crazy Diamond (both sets of parts sort of bookend here), and play the first half or so of Dark Side of the Moon (concluding with a really good Money). Wish You Were Here caps the second set, and the encore is back to Mike standards, including a solid Blind Man in the Dark to close things out. That Floyd set though…
The Essential Performance: Shine On You Crazy Diamond (both sets of parts separately win)
For a PBS show, Chris Cornell is full on potty mouth. Actually, I think it is pretty fair to say it was an off night altogether for Cornell, though the rest of the band sounds pretty good. The classic songs here are not exceptional compared to what you would expect, but the King Animal songs they were touring on are actually what deserves top billing, though nothing would top show closer Slaves & Bulldozers, complete with an In My Time of Dying tease. For all the great songs I love from these guys though, it really is surprising that I was most happy during Been Away Too Long, Taree, By Crooked Steps, Rowing, and Bones of Birds. I do think there’s got to be a stronger show they could have used than this though.
When this whole thing is done, I do want to make a Spotify playlist of the absolute best of all this (at least from the stuff available on that platform) that isn’t 100 hours long. I’ll at least have fun whittling down that list.
Joined: Sat January 05, 2013 1:57 pm Posts: 32617 Location: Where everybody knows your name
liebzz wrote:
When this whole thing is done, I do want to make a Spotify playlist of the absolute best of all this (at least from the stuff available on that platform) that isn’t 100 hours long. I’ll at least have fun whittling down that list.
As long as Liz Reed and Whipping Post are on there, it doesn’t matter.
_________________ Let me tell you, Homer Simpson is cock of nothing! - C. Montgomery Burns
When this whole thing is done, I do want to make a Spotify playlist of the absolute best of all this (at least from the stuff available on that platform) that isn’t 100 hours long. I’ll at least have fun whittling down that list.
As long as Liz Reed and Whipping Post are on there, it doesn’t matter.
This is the most recent of the full shows Pearl Jam dropped on streaming services a few years back, bringing with it hope that more would be dumped on as well (they weren’t). My memory serves that this was one of the more special shows dropped, and there’s a lot of good performances on here, though Eddie Vedder’s voice is in probably one of its more rough periods. That said, the second encore is one epic song after the next. Oddly, the best performance here goes to some of the Lightning Bolt tracks, and here specifically, Sirens - a song I normally wouldn’t look forward to in one of their shows.
The Essential Performance: Sirens
Up Next: Pearl Jam - Vault #12: Moline, IL 10/17/14
I was as shocked as you! It’s actually the one song Eddie absolutely nails in this set.
Also, it’s not lost on me that the last two Pearl Jam reviews we end up with Just Breathe and Sirens. Perhaps all these live albums are making me soft?
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