to treemaculate: the reason the waves got weird at the point that you mention was that barber's guitar cut out right before he was supposed to play that line. he made a "stretch" gesture to the rest of the band to cover while he tried to fix it

4/30/03
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Spectacle - Standalone/jamless.

Crystal Ball - Standalone/jamless.

Dribble - Decent enough first jam, nothing noteworthy but not bad. The second jam is very good, Magner taking some lead here and playing some interesting arpeggios. Very good jam into RLH.

RLH - The first jam is a happy little jam that pleases my ears. Well done, Biscuits. The second jam is one that kinda goes nowhere. It sounds like everybody was playing pretty uninspired for this particular jam.

Pygmy - Again, this one kinda goes nowhere, though there's some good interplay between Barber and Magner for a while.

SRB - I instantly like this Shem-Rah jam. Magner is playing a really cool patch and the rest of the band is just playing around him. The entire jam is really great, and it leads perfectly into the ending. Very nice to listen to the ending every now and again since it'll probably never be played again.

Jam > Tunnel - The jam starts out with a nice groove, and Magner is messing around with his organ patch. This jam gets super chilled out around 6 minutes or so and turns into a peaceful summer day of lying in a field. The jam in the Tunnel isn't bad, but nothing noteworthy here.

Buddha - The Barbz forgotten teh lyrics! They actually run through the second verse twice because Barber forgets lyrics. Classic Barber. Classic. They start up in a start-stop jam, and then they get into a dark-sounding dance party. Sammy is really the driving force behind this jam, and Barber is doing his best to just confuse everybody involved. It actually ends up working for them, somehow, and turning into this swirling mass of psychedelia. Very good segue into I-Man.

I-Man - I don't know what it is about I-Mans in Spring of 03, but they weren't playing any songs NEARLY as long as I-Man. 2nd I-Man jam (after second verse) is DARK. Hello, Magner! Some really phrygian sounding stuff. Barber comes in around 4 and a half minutes with a really cool riff that fits perfectly. Unfortunately, they only let this last about 2 minutes before coming in with the "I'm only doin' what I can" portion. Real missed opportunity here. This is especially unfortunate because the I-Man 3rd jam (after 3rd verse, before 1st ending) is pretty boring. It never really goes anywhere at all. Luckily, the 4th jam is very very good, blissful stuff that should always be the 4th I-Man jam. It almost has an ambient-house feel to it. It morphs into this creepy jam that has Magner using a pretty cool patch for textural effect and sounds awesome. Then they go BACK to the pretty, happy stuff. Barber almost sounds like a Jerry Garcia ripoff for a little bit as they head back into the ending. The jam out of I-Man is a fast, dark, trance jam, but it's kind of generic as far as those go. You can feel the inverted Waves coming from a ways away. That being said, the Waves peak is pretty damn good.

Waves - Kind of a weird moment once they finish Waves, since they don't play the "exit" riff. Clearly Magner was ready for it and Barber backs out for some reason. They meander for a bit and then play the Waves riff a minute or two later. Weird. The jam out is a slowed down, almost dub feeling jam. Magner busts out the pan flute patch, which I'm a sucker for. The ending of Buddha is okay. Not great, not bad.

Moon > RLH - Both of these jams are pretty cookie cutter Biscuits. The 1st TVM jam is about par for the course, and TVM > RLH sounds about how you would expect it to. I wasn't too impressed.

3 stars overall. There were a few great jams (SRB, Buddha (1st), I-Man (4th)), but a few of the other jams in this show were pretty uninspired.

And the text-book editor spelled brief incorrectly! What a jack-ass...