Tracklist:

I'd Have You Anytime • My Sweet Lord • Wah-Wah • Isn't It A Pity (Version One) • What Is Life • If Not For You • Behind That Locked Door • Let It Down • Run Of The Mill • Beware Of Darkness • Apple Scruffs • Ballad Of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll) • Awaiting On You All • All Things Must Pass • I Dig Love • Art Of Dying • Isn't It A Pity (Version Two) • Hear Me Lord • Out Of The Blue • It's Johnny's Birthday • Plug Me In • I Remember Jeep • Thanks For The Pepperoni

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JamBand - Tsutsumi Rizumu

responding to last night's phish show in the most normal way i know how

When the jam so nasty all u can do is bob ur head and make concerned faces

The Allman Brothers Band - Dreams

THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND

New Riders of the Purple Sage at Mickey's Ranch, Novato, CA. Credit: Unknown

Taste - On The Boards

(1970 album)

Youtube Playlist

[Blues Rock, Jazz-Rock, Hard Rock, Jam Band]

Alright, so I am going to stop posting for the day here in just a minute, but I wanted to get this one off my plate (out of my Drafts folder) while I still have a million fluid ounces of coffee in my veins.

So, Goose played a four-show run at the Capitol Theatre this past week, and it was awesome (over the web; I wasn't there in person). Originally, after switching drummers at the end of last year, they weren't slated to play any shows until June of this year, and while six months off the road might be pretty typical for today's big-name rock and pop acts, it's fairly unusual for a jam band, especially one that's currently shooting up the ladder in terms of popularity.

But then there was the new drummer announcement and the attendant rehearsal jams, which I've written a bit about already. And then there was Ted Tapes 2024, a new album that dropped with essentially no warning in February. Then, a mere three weeks and change before the band planned to hit the stage, they announced a four-show run at the Capitol Theatre in April, as a way of introducing their new drummer and new-ish sound.

As I said above, this run was fantastic. The band sounds great, and is clearly having a ton of fun playing alongside Cotter Ellis, the new drummer. There were moments when I missed Ben's playing, for sure, but the story at the end of the day is New Drummer Good, and also Old Drummer Good. Maybe I'll further process my feelings on that point later, and if so, maybe I'll blog about it. Maybe I'll keep it to myself.

Anyway, the band has only shared two videos from the run so far, one of a huge improvisational sequence at the heart of their night two show, wherein they played their 2016 album Moon Cabin in its entirety to mark the eclipse that had happened earlier in the day (and then proceeded to drop the show recording with this insane cover art). I will write about this later. Maybe tomorrow.

The other video is the one linked at the top of this post, which comes from set two of the final night of the run and features a sit-in by three members of Vampire Weekend (yay!), as Goose covers the new VW song "Gen-X Cops" from their just-released album (woo!) and the classic VW tune "Cape Cod (Kwassa Kwassa)" (whoa!), the latter of which turns into a thirty-plus-minute jam (huh?).

And as it turns out, not everything needs to be a jam. Sometimes, the real thirty-minute jams are the friends we make along the way.

So. As you know, the thing I do on this here blog with regard to jams is to write lots about them in exacting, weird-and-maybe-pointless detail. I am not going to do this for this jam, however. Mostly because -- and I mean this as respectfully as possible -- the Vampire Weekend guys are just not jam band musicians, and while they are having fun up there on stage during the jam (except maybe Ezra, who just looks sort of lost throughout), none of them with the exception of the drummer (whose name I don't know and certainly have no way to look up or learn) really adds anything to this jam or contributes at all to its direction. It's basically most of Vampire Weekend just hanging out on stage as Goose drags them through a long, multipart jam.

There are certainly parts where Rick in particular very obviously intentionally makes room for the VW guys to take over, but they just...don't? And there are parts where the VW bassist tries to engage with Trevor in a dueling-basses sort of thing, and Trevor just...doesn't engage? And for some reason the VW drummer doesn't replace Cotter, the new guy, on his kit, but instead replaces Jeff, which means Jeff is stuck playing a third electric guitar, which can literally never be heard during the entire performance. And all of these things add to something that in a lot of ways is just really, really not interesting as a result. To be clear, there are also parts where the Goose guys just do a big ol' heap of Goose-y jamming, and it's good, but there's, like, these three other guys on stage while it's happening, and it's just sort of weird.

I'm not trying to throw shade at the VW guys here. I love Vampire Weekend (Father Of The Bride is one of my favorite albums by anyone in the last ten years), but as much as they are clearly influenced by jam bands as a genre and likely Goose in particular, they themselves are definitely not a jam band. And that kind of high-energy, long-form improvisation isn't something you can just jump on stage and do one day after never really doing it much previously. So, it's not their fault, per se, but it's also just sort of a mixed bag of music for a half-hour-plus as a result.

In the end, I wanted to share it because it's neat to see these two bands collaborating again, but it's a bit too much of a mess for me to be interested in going through the whole thing with my usual fine-toothed comb.

Next up, though, is the aforementioned Moon Cabin monster jam. For today, though, I'm going to step away from the keyboard and do something else for awhile...

Tracklist:

Peaches En Regalia • Willie The Pimp • Son Of Mr. Green Genes • Little Umbrellas • The Gumbo Variations • It Must Be A Camel

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hearts and concerts

I may have stepped away from heartbeat activity for two months, but I didn’t step away from concert activity. My desire to experience a woman's heartbeat is always present, as is my desire to experience a concert. There’s always some jam concert going on somewhere nearby, well, at least within an hour drive. April is filled with them, but I’m holding back. I just have one more scheduled for this month—Magic Beans—but others are clawing at me. It’s tough to resist a jam show that’s less than a twenty-minute drive. Scheduled for next month is Lespecial very close by, and Peak (as in Peaktheband.com) in the Hartford area. Nothing for June yet, but July is busy. I can’t wait for tailgating. Lespecial is gonna be tough, because the following day is my Easter, which means people start showing up here sometime after noontime. Easter means lots of eating and drinking, hence a pounding heart. I wouldn't mind waking up with a pounding heart Easter morning, but NOT a pounding head.

For any heartbeat lover who is reading this, I'll eventually break out my stethoscope and doppler and record my heart beating, and break out my ultrasound machine and show my heart beating.

He is the moment. He is everything to me.