Looking to mix it up? This 1-hour shredder from the rare and elusive Backbone will have you holding onto your hat. It starts tamely enough, with an audience of what sounds like just a few dozen people welcoming the trio to the heady old bay area dance hall. The opening number has a really bumping, grounded, focused riff paired with a nostalgic chorus. A good warm-up tune. Sittin’ Here Thinkin’ struts right along in classic, traditional blues style. All The Time has Bill the Drummer and bassist Edd Cook shifting the rhythm around wonderfully. This is where Backbone really starts rattling.

By this point in the show, two things are evident about Billy’s drumming - one being the actual drum kit itself. It’s an assembly that sounds very similar to the kit he was using a couple of years prior during the Grateful Dead’s Fall ‘94, Spring ‘95, and Summer ‘95 tours, except that it sounds like there’s fewer toms, and the snare he’s using here has a little more bite and pop to it. Another thing that’s very apparent is Kreutzmann’s exceptional drumming fluidity and quality. That much is unsurprising, but it’s still very much noteworthy because he’s alone at the kit! Backbone came around after 20 consecutive years of the two-drummer Grateful Dead format, but a little before Bill’s more recent single-drummer projects like The Trichomes, BK3, 7 Walkers, and Billy & The Kids. Besides his work in the 80’s for those Grateful Dead offshoots like the Jerry Garcia Band, Kokomo, and Go Ahead, I think this is the only live tape from 1975-1998 of him playing as the single drummer of a band!

Besides being a true rarity, 7/14/97 is an exceptional showcase of Kreutzmann’s skill, versatility, and unique style. He chops out the old-style blues rhythms like Sittin’ Here Thinkin’ and New Speedway Boogie in stylish fashion as a springboard for Rick Barnett, while surfing along with a more restrained, breezy drumming approach for the slower blues joints like Inner City Blues and Stayed Away Too Long (restrained and breezy, that is, until the whole trio explodes into those ripping guitar solo segments that really lay on the burners). For the jammier songs like All The Time, Drums, Dreams, the unknown instrumental, and Scarlet > Fire, Bill exhibits his trademark unstructured swirling flow, where he keeps “feel” instead of keeping “time”. The hi-hats rustle along in trippy coils and cycles around a thumping against-the-grain kick drum. The cymbals have a deliciously stony, metallic ring to them which Kreutz applies generously. There are points where the whole band is firing out notes in every direction, and Billy gives the snare drum some real snap to keep it all in very orderly disorder.

This show is both an electric bluesfest and a psychedelic jamout; a sizzling barbecue of musicianship put on for the Berkeley faithful and those of us lucky enough to stumble upon the recording years after the fact. Rick Barnett seems to be of the Jimi Hendrix / Allman Brothers school, and when he lets fly it’s damn impressive. Edd Cook is one mean bassist, with quick punchy lines and dragged out cross-eyed counterweights dragging the undercurrent of the jams in all kinds of directions. But the star of the show is Bill Kreutzmann. This is the world’s best drummer doing what he does best. It’s difficult to cherry-pick highlights, especially given that the show is just an hour and change. Any open-minded deadhead can give this show a full spin and be greatly rewarded! If I had to pin down the cream of the crop, I’d point to All The Time, the impeccable passage from 5:16-6:37 in Dreams, and the unknown instrumental, which is a brilliant, vicious, demented jam vehicle showing shades of Slipknot!, King Solomon’s Marbles, and The Seven jam of ‘73-’74 Eyes of the Worlds. What a privilege to listen, I only wish we had more to enjoy of this incredibly gifted group. As far as smaller bands go, Backbone is more like the Jimi Hendrix Experience, BK3, and Aquarium Rescue Unit than Phish or Twiddle. I keep this one as a CD on the shelf, and intend to keep it in rotation as a palate cleanser and true novelty piece whenever I need a totally out-of-the-box ripper to fire up. Thank you for taping, transferring, and uploading! This one must have been great to attend.