·:[ notetoself.us Blog ]:·
• • • • •

The Les Claypool show last Tuesday night might be the best one of him seen in any configuration.  I don’t know if this was just a good night, or that his new album came out that day, or maybe be the new arrangement of the band.  Whatever it was, he was phenomenal.  My friend Katie was blown away.

The non-Primus band as I’ve seen him before was drums, percussion, sitar, sax, and of course bass.  This time the sitar and sax stayed home and he brought with him a cellist.  A cellist!

The sound was really cool.  I mean really cool.  The guy ran it through effects from time to time and on most of his solos.  The interesting thing is that he spent half the show either doubling what Claypool was doing or playing a counter riff to it.  So without any specific lead instrument to carry the melody, the show – the better part of it – consisted of 4 rhythm musicians weaving around an understated melody.  It was damn impressive.

Speaking of damn impressive, the drum solo was just that.  What?  Me liking a drum solo?  These guys (Paulo Baldi on drums and Mike Dillon on percussion) have been with Les for 5 or 6 years and I’m sure they have gotten to know each other’s instincts really well.  This was an example like no other of on stage communication.  One would lay down a groove that the other would pick up and add some more rhythms to, then stick with that until one or the other changed things up.  A couple times they lost each other but came back quickly.  There’re those years of touring together coming into play.  I hope to high heaven someone taped the show so you can hear it to.  I’m hopeful though not terribly optimistic that a tape will get distributed. 

Exception to that vibe, though not an exception to the performance, was a few tunes that Claypool did solo.  For those he used either a dobro or a banjo (both of which were strung like a bass) and were all about rhythmic melody.  And good.  But hey, he can do just about anything a bass.  Speaking of, he apparently has a new one.  Here’s a pic I bogarted from some other recent gig but I can’t tell if it’s new or not.  Is Cleez in the house?  The tone was a little different but that doesn’t mean a new instrument.   

(new addition: 3-27-09, Cleez is in the house and provided this link (and be sure to check Carl Thompson’s page linked there too)

Aside from that Les played a bunch of stuff from his new album and if the record is like the cd, the songs are tight, well executed, and could easily be music for film noir stuff if a rock band were to do it.  A bit of a darker vibe.  I’ve always been impressed that his Les Claypool shows have really focused on his (now) 4 albums with only 1 or 2 consistent Primus references.  He was a good showman as well, lots of mask and hat changes and changed up his instrument a lot.  In addition to his regular bass, he had an electric type upright, the whamola, and the aforementioned banjo bass and dobro bass.  Good stuff Maynard. 

He had 3 opening acts this time and I was stoked to see 2 of them with some curiosity about the other. 

Devotchka played before Claypool and folks who saw Little Miss Sunshine have heard their music (they did the score).  From what I gather the folks are all of some Eastern European descent and the songs have that flavor, at one point even breaking out into a full on polka beat.  The girl playing bass also used a shiny tuba, and at one point on stage there was that tuba, drums, theremin, guitar, and a zither (traditional instrument).  I liked the songs enough to give whatever cd’s the radio station has a listen.

I’ve been looking forward to seeing Saul Williams since Jake caught him at Lollapalooza last year.  I’ve kept track of this guy for 10 years or so after hearing his poetry.  I dug his set quite a bit and would see him again in spite of his DJ*.  Lots of energy and very dynamic.  For the most part the crowd didn’t really warm up to him when he was trying to engage them.  Folks may not have been ready for someone to lay out a spoken word piece then run right into a very full and heavy and loud music piece.  The house sound seemed a little off to, sometimes his voice was too low in the mix and when he broke out his appropriately timed cover of Sunday Bloody Sunday (it was St. Paddy’s day remember) we could hear the clarity of his voice so well in part because the music fell back to karaoke sound levels.

Secret Chiefs 3 played first and it was either a short set or we missed a bunch.  What we did see in that short time was awesome.  Very heavy music (most would probably call it metal), precise delivery (like it had a message to deliver), and came to me as atmospheric and intense.  They also communicated well on stage with the bass player and drummer constantly watching each other and the rest of the players.  Point of order:  there were 6 or 7 people on stage and I don’t think any of them were the former members of Mr. Bungle.  Listen to them do the Theme from Halloween a week or so ago. 
Here’s the set list from Claypool’s set.

Highball With The Devil
Amanitas
David Makalaster w/ Southbound Pachyderm tease
Red state Girl
What Would Sir George Martin Do
Calling Kyle
Drums (including brief whamola jam)
Boonville Stomp
Of Whales and Woe
Electric Funeral

Encore:

Iowan Gal
Buzzards

Here’re a few tunes: 

A cool version of the C2B3 song Big Eyeball In The Sky with Buckethead and Bernie Worrell guesting.

Les solo with doing American Life & Iowan Gal with what should be a familiar riff at the beginning.

Finally, a version of One Better, one of the best songs from Claypool’s last album.  It’s got the sitar, sax, and teases of a couple other tunes in the jam.

Even more final, I just checked lesclaypool.com and there’s a video of the dobro bass and a story of when he auditioned for Metallica!

(addition, 3-27-09, there’s a free song at Amazon from the new album)

*CX Kidtronix produced and helped write some of the songs on Saul’s latest album but I/we know him for being a talent free jack ass the last time we went to South By Southwest in 2007.  We thought he was a cool guy called Doujah Raze and left after numerous sound problems and awful production and performance from him.  Even tonight, Katie and I both got the impression he wanted to be a front man but not sure that his ability to hit buttons on a sampler would enable him to be in front without looking like Louis & Gilbert in the music number towards the end of Revenge Of The Nerds.

15 Years Ago today was a monumental gig in the world of the Mixmaster.

Pearl Jam, at the Fox.

They were touring on their second album, Vs., and their was a lot of attention on the band.  For me, I was in full fledged obsession.  I bought every single regardless of what country released it and picked up every magazine that Eddie Vedder or the band was in as a whole.  I’ve written before about when the album came out, but this quick tidbit is about the concert (the ticket experience will come later).

This was probably the first show that I completely absorbed and paid attention to in detail.  There were gigs before this that I loved and could talk about semi-intelligently but truth of the matter is before this I would drift off during a song I didn’t particularly care for or would just lose track.  I don’t think I appreciated gigs from a musical standpoint until this one.  On this day, I was stoked enough to forego the mental meanderings to watch the show and for the first time I was able to really appreciate the band as a complete unit.  The band was rockin’ and just as cool live as they were every time I saw them on TV or VHS bootleg concerts.  I suppose it also served as an exception to the notion that a band could be as good in person as on MTV.

They played solidly.  Dave Abbruzese was on fire, total limb independence it seemed.  The guitars/bass played with much skill and energy.  Every song was freaking awesome.  They didn’t have any mediocre ones yet.  Sure some made you air guitar more enthusiastically than others, but no song was getting skipped because I didn’t like it (that didn’t happen until two albums later with ‘No Code’*).  They debuted a song from Vitalogy and demonstrated why they were the biggest band in USA at the time.  If there was a bigger band I can’t remember them.  Bigger selling singles?  Well, yeah, (Boyz II Men, bloody Ace Of Base, probably Gin N Juice) and while Nirvana was probably as big, they toured far far less.

Every ‘Seattle sound’ fan I knew had a copy of the ‘Singles’ soundtrack.  You should if you don’t, it’s a great record.  Anyway, Pearl Jam had 2 amazing songs on it, State Of Love & Trust and Breath.  The former was being played regularly, the latter, only half a dozen times up to that point as far as I knew** and it was at the top of my wishlist for the night.  So Stone Gossard starts doing this little riff on his gee-tar that I recognized from a recently acquired bootleg as leading into State Of Love & Trust.  Ahhh…when spending $30 for a one disc bootleg made sense…  I told that to Shag, very cocky probably.  But that wasn’t so.  Instead they break into Breath and I my mental marbles roll.  Still one my favourites PJ songs I was beside myself.  It was a high water mark moment where I wanted to call everyone I knew to tell them how awesome my night was, and how there’s must certainly be sucking donkey by comparison.

Some other highlights were Dissident, Rearviewmirror, Why Go?, Glorified G, and the song starting the show, Release.

Speaking of the opening, there were 2 opening acts.  First band was a favourite of bass player Jeff Ament, a band from Minneapolis called ‘The Frogs’ who were quite a hoot.  Grant Lee Buffalo was second but I took a cat nap because they weren’t Pearl Jam.  Nothing against them, but they weren’t Pearl Jam.  The Frogs came with credentials.

Alex’s sister was ushering that night with a bunch of other youngsters because hype about these crazy flannel wearing long hairs frightened off the regulars.  Maybe the GNR riot was still alive and well in peoples minds.  When PJ was here for Lollapalooza in 1992 they were rowdier than the crowd (but had they played later in the day who knows).

As far as I can tell, this was also the start of me writing down set list.  That’s 15 years of poor penmanship penned in awful light.  Some culture will dig up my notebooks in 900 years and bass a religion around the hieroglyphs.

It took me 14 years, I finally found a bootleg of this show.  It’s an audio rip from a VHS tape but hey, I’ll take it.  So download Breath and State Of Love & Trust.  Oh yeah, what kind of post would this be without a set list?

Release
Go
Animal
Dissident
Evenflow
Why Go?
Jeremy
improv
Glorified G
Daughter (w/ bits of Beginning To See The Light (Velvet Underground cover, 1st time played) and W.M.A.)
Blood
improv
Breath
State of Love and Trust
Black
Alive
Not For You
Rearviewmirror
Elderly Woman…
Porch

*Though the song ‘Bugs’ on Vitalogy was way over my head at the time. Maybe bands you like should be a little ahead of you.

**Turns out it was actually the 32nd time.  Oh well.  It’s still a rare tune overall, being performed 57 times since October 1990.  For comparison purposes:  some originals haven’t been played that much, they’ve played The Who song Baba O’Riley twice as much, Evenflow has been played 622 times, Alive has 544 knotches on it’s guitar neck.

Jake and some of his friends and Stereo Steve saw the second night, and here’s the set list for that gig.

Why Go
Deep
Animal
Once
Rats (played even less that Breath!)
Blood
Glorified G
Daughter (w/ bit of The Real Me by The Who)
Alive
Go
Even Flow
Spin the Black Circle
Porch/Beginning to See the Light
Corduroy
Rearviewmirror
Black
Leash/Improv
I’m One (The Who cover)
Baba O’Riley (The Who cover)

Peace out dawgs.

March 8, 2009