Ummmm....weeellll...soooooo...yeeeaaahhh...that actually happened. Phew. Deep breath.
Teaser: Later in this post I am going to post an analogy that amounted to an epiphany for me. It strikes even me as fairly outrageous, but all I can say is I believe it.
Housekeeping: The show was about 2:20. As I say every year, I do not understand why the Friday show, which is usually the show at which the Camp Amped band opensand is followed by a typical DBT-related opener, doesn't start earlier than the usual single opener shows. In light of the quality of the shows it's more asterisk than complaint but what would be the harm in starting earlier?
A long, long time ago in a nearby galaxy i started writing these reviews mostly as a way to try to decompress after a rock show in order to be able to sleep, party as a way to try to process what I had just seen and heard and partly to reach out to others similarly inclined. I have no formal musical training, I do not play any instrument, I do not have any journalistic or academic training in criticism and I've never been in a band. All of which is to say that I am not qualified to address the topics I'm about to address nor do I have the vocabulary to do so. I'm pretty sure that only Elizabeth Nelson could fully convey what happened tonight but maybe there are one or two others. That being said, here goes:
I am not going to compare this show to any other. As Dustin Hoffman sort of explained many years ago when he won one of his oscars, it's absurd to compare or rank art; it's not susceptible to that kind of simplification. Last night was wonderful. So was tonight. They were different experiences, each equally special.
Yesterday, I meant to resurrect the old "bubba scale" which I introduced a long time ago to measure how many songs into a show I felt I had gotten my money's worth. A four was an exceptional score. A three was almost unheard of. Last nite was a 4. Tonight was a 2. It is hard to describe the energy, power and magnificence of going from zero to 150 mph in the space of a couple of chords. About 45 minutes in I said to jonicont something like "do you realize that they've only been playing for about 45 minutes?" because it seemed like the band had already performed a full concert. About 5 or 10 minutes later I turned to jonicont again and said "if my head actually explodes, tell my wife I love her." Possibly related: jonicont left the tiki bar about 2 minutes later.
Resurrecting yet another descriptor from the past, I used to describe the band's forays into overlapping three guitar fireworks as "guitar madness." Tonight was very very close to the feel and sound of that era as all 3 guitarists had their moments to shine and their overlapping ensemble jamming (perhaps more accurately described as guitar freakouts) brought back memories of those transcendent moments from a different era of the band.
I really hope someone was recording tonight because in addition to the music itself, Patterson was in peak form talking about certain individual songs. His intro to "Boys From Alabama" was as far as I know new and it was a moment to savor. The actual song itself was over the top terrific and I say that while suspecting that I am less enamored of that song than many other heathens.
I can remember writing a few reviews over the years when the band played flat out from the first note to last and left everything on the stage.
While there was technically a slow one or two tonight, it was virtually entirely pedal to the metal rock n roll from end to end and the band just steamrollered anything and everything in its path. Because Patterson played acoustic guitar during the semi-new version of "Plastic Flowers" I kind of sort of thought that maybe that was supposed to be the slow one but it most definitely was not. For the record, I love this version of the song. "English Oceans" was also on the rockin' side of the scale. The first truly slow one was "Sounds Better in the Song" and even after last night's terrific version, this one was even better. As far as I can remember, Cooley has never been in better voice and has never sounded as emotionally committed to his songs as he does right now.
"Play it All Night Long" is my favorite DBT cover mostly because it seems to me to sound like a "real" DBT song. They crushed it tonite.
I'll digress for a second to note that there was a significant breach of DBT etiquette and protocol as tonight was the 3rd straight nite which started w/ a Cooley song. I'm shocked I tell you, shocked!
Trying not to be too repetitive, I'll just say that the musicianship on display tonight by all concerned was at least as good as I've described earlier in the week. These cats can fucking play! At one point, possibly during "Lookout Mountain" though I'm not sure, I started thinking about Cream with EZB and Matt, especially Matt, slotting into the Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce roles while between them Cooley and Jay w/ the occasional assist from Patterson, combined to fill the Eric Clapton spot. Perhaps Blind Faith would be an even closer analogy in order to account for Jay's keys but it was the almost but not quite free form playing that skated close to the line of chaos but stayed on the right side of that line as inspired playing and playing off each other that I'm trying to get at.
I think most heathens would agree that we love this band in part for not strictly musical reasons. That was in evidence tonight when a fight broke out among what seemed to be 4 or 5 people about 10 rows from the stage. Patterson immediately stopped playing "Hell No", yelled at the miscreants while pointing them out to the security folks and continued to castigate the losers until they were gone from the club. Best line as Patterson switched from "Hell No" (which he said was ruined for the night and would be revisited tomorrow) to "Too Much Sex" was Patterson saying to the departed assholes, "I hope this is your favorite song." Perfect. How Patterson raided his catalog to come up w/ that particular rarity is a mystery to me but it worked wonderfully.
I don't know whether "Tornadoes" was at all responsive to Beaverdam's comments above, but it was presumably played because of the disastrous weather affecting so much of the country especially the South. Patterson will do that. I guess that I should also mention that Patterson made multiple apropos comments about Trump and his current predicament but I didn't hear any of them well enough to report them accurately. Suffice to say that the audience was quite appreciative.
So, my promised analogy: Somewhere around "Self Destructive Zones", give or take a song or two, I was struck by this thought: The rock band DBT most closely resembles is The Band. Just to be clear I consider that to be incredibly high praise. While the analogy is of course not exact, the mix of great songwriting grounded in the heart of America spiritually and musically, multiple singers w/ truly different "voices" and not just in the literal sense, and the incredible musicianship of all the players in the band but especially those not featured in songwriting, is to me, very similar. Without meaning to make either Hood or Cooley into "the next Dylan," I think the analogy works best when compared to those moments in time when the Band backed Dylan. So there it is, let me know what you think.
Special props to Jay for his solo piano and vocal performance at the Friday Heathens Hangout and Nuci's fundraiser. Jay loves his pop music and it shows, as does his deep knowledge and mastery of the genre. If I'm not mistaken Jay's singing voice has evolved in some interesting and appealing ways. It wouldn't be correct to describe it as "deeper" but it is a more mature, fuller and more resonant with more nuance and maybe range (?). His whistled version of "Heathens" was especially fun and the new song he cowrote w/ Pete Smith and debuted during the performance, "Forgetting You is Easy" was, on first hearing, a noticeable step up in Jay's songwriting w/ potential commercial possibilities. A test pressing of another song from the same recording sessions, "She's My Girl" in a very cool format will be one of the items auctioned at Nuci's on Saturday. I will definitely be bidding.
And we get to do it again in just a few hours!!!
PS Thanks to Red Celt for the prompt posting of the setlist.