I want to tell ya’ll about a little treasure from Virginia called Edward’s of Surry. This is about sausage. This is about sausage and bacon and ham. Smoked meats. I know Dylan is pickin’ up what I’m throwin’ down.
About 3 years ago my dad introduced me to Edwards, a.k.a. Virginia Traditions, when he sent me the cavalier Collection (ahem) for Christmas. The bacon had nipples, so you know it was the real deal. I don’t know what it is, but I will never forget that gift.
So delicious. I’ve received Edwards ’ every year since and I’m pretty sure Edwards now has a permanent association with Christmas. I send it to my friends. I want you to send it to your friends. If you like meat you will love Edwards. I’m not just saying to be saying. This is quality stuff.
Trees on Fire are set to play their second show in as many years at Charlottesville’s Fridays After Five tomorrow, 5/9/08. The Butter Room was lucky enough to catch up with Trees’ drummer, Paul Rosner, before the show for some question and answer time.
What’s the songwriting process like? Do lyrics come first and then music or the other way around? Is there a primary lyricist in the group?
Paul Rosner: Generally, Rob or Blake will bring the skeleton of a song to the group first. The skeleton includes melody, lyrics, and a basic chord progression, though things can and do change once the band has gotten ahold of the song. At that point, we spend a lot of time working on the basic grooves/feel of the different parts, as well as figuring out what instruments to use. That often means Justin has to decide which of his many toys to pull out, but Rob has been playing less guitar in the group lately, so he also has decisions to make. Sometimes, those decisions come about after we’ve tried a few different arrangements, and other times, songs evolve after we’ve played them live a few times.
What’s been the most successful show you’ve had both in terms of turnout and performance? Were they the same show?
Paul: In terms of turnout, the most successful shows we’ve had were 3/13/08 at Satellite Ballroom here in Cville and last April’s CD release party for The Green Room, which took place at Starr Hill. We had the room completely packed and sold out at the latter, and had a big, raucous crowd at the former that was singing along loudly, dancing like mad, and generally giving out amazingly strong energy. I would say this last show at Satellite was also one of our best, though we’re never completely happy with a performance. I guess that’s pretty normal.
You are all very skilled musicians and performers - do you take requests at shows?
Paul: We don’t really take requests, mostly because we spend a lot of time working on highly specified arrangements of our original songs, and obviously we’re anxious to play them for people. The songs keep evolving, growing, and getting stronger each time we perform, so I think they stay pretty fresh. In the past, however, we have taken a few requests of our own songs (and the occasional cover).
What’s your favorite cover that you play live?
Paul: I really enjoy playing “Walking on the Moon” by the Police and “If You Want Me to Stay” by Sly and the Family Stone. The Police have always been one of my all-time favorite bands (I got to see them at Bonnaroo last summer), and they are a big influence on Trees on Fire, particularly when we first formed. The Sly song has been a favorite of mine for a while, and it’s one of the few songs I sing lead on, so that’s fun for me.
How do you try to manage the balance between socially responsible/political lyrics without sounding preachy and potentially turning people off from the music?
Paul: That’s a great question and one that we wrestle with when considering what causes to support. There’s no denying that each of us are very concerned with social responsibility, but we want to show people the folly of our ways in an uplifting and non-judgemental way. We are very very lucky to have lyricists who seem to be able to find this balance naturally and don’t have to force it. “Take a Seat” is a good example of that balance. The lyrics observe: “we take a seat, take a seat in our cars. We drive around making everything ours, but as we get to the end of our road, we realize there’s something else than gold. Don’t wait around.” Clearly, there’s a problem presented in this verse, but the author includes himself as part of the problem and basically concludes that we should all begin looking for solutions right away. It also helps that this song is musically uplifting and hopeful, which fits well with the lyrics.
When is the new record coming out and what can Trees on Fire fans expect compared to last year’s “The Green Room”?
Paul: We are hard at work recording the new album as we speak (tentatively titled “Organica”) and expect it to be done around the end of summer. The new songs tend toward a little darker sound with more dance beats and influence than The Green Room. We’re getting better at figuring out our sound as we go, and I think we have a collection of 12-15 songs that not only continue to show all aspects of our musicianship but also have a true Trees on Fire “sound.” Defining that sound is always difficult, but we’re creating what we like to think of our own sub-genre, Organica.
What/Who are Trees on Fire greatest influences?
Paul: We have many, but some of the biggest are Bob Marley, Radiohead, Bach, The Roots, and Stevie Wonder, among others. These vocal artists all combine inspiration in music and words like prophets, and Bach is just genius personified. Other styles influence our sound as well, including jazz, ska, soul (new and old), klezmer, baroque, and hard rock.
I caught you guys at the Satellite Ballroom in March. What’s the story behind the belly dancers? Do they make regular appearances at your shows?
Paul: The belly dancers are a semi-regular part of our performances, partly because we love the energy they bring to our music. Their dancing adds an exotic element to what we do, which we consider somewhat exotic by itself. It’s a pretty potent combination. At the Satellite show, Shaheen and Lindsay worked out involved routines for a couple songs, so we couldn’t resist getting them up on stage to add to the madness. We look at ourselves as kind of a living circus on stage, so it seems natural for belly dancers to be a part of it.
What is the best live performance you have ever seen in person?
Paul: That is a tough question. I am going to see Radiohead for the first time this Sunday - my birthday - so I may have to wait on a definite answer, but I will give you a couple of my highlights.
R.E.M. in 1984 at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta along with the Minutemen; Fishbone in 1991 at Trax in Charlottesville (such ridiculously high energy); U2 in 1985 at the Omni in Atlanta (touring to support The Unforgettable Fire, which is my favorite U2 album); Herbie Hancock in 2002 at 9:30 Club in DC.
What do you think of the current music scene in Charlottesville? Who do you recommend catching live?
Paul: The music scene is Cville is hopping right now. Ten years ago, it seemed like there wasn’t much orignial music going on in town, but I am constantly amazed by the talent on display these days: Birdlips, Beetnix, Kings of Belmont, and Acoustic Groove Trio, just to name a few. You can even catch Beetnix playing with Trees on Fire at Satellite Ballroom on May 23. It’s sure to be one of the last ever shows at Satellite, so it will be a special night that’s full of surprises.
Diver Down was one of the first rock albums I ever owned. “Mean Street” was the first guitar solo to blow me away. “Hot for Teacher” was the best video ever made (at least from the perspective of a 13 year old male, but it’s not too shabby at 37 either). I loved Van Halen and then David Lee Roth left. Enter Sammy Hagar and you know the rest of the story. Even though I bought 5150 and OU812, Van Halen was dead to me.
Other than Led Zeppelin, there is not a band on earth that I have wanted to see reunite more than Van Halen with their original front man, Diamond David Lee Roth. After two postponements earlier this year, the show finally went on last Friday, May 2nd at the John Paul Jones Arena in Charlottesville. My expectations were low, very low. The postponements left me with a sour taste, but not sour enough to miss this event.
Show time was 8:00. We rolled in about 8:45 without tickets. There were plenty available at the box office and after dropping serious coin to see The Boss on Wednesday, I was not going to pay top dollar for Van Halen. Instead the plan was to buy from a scalper and sneak down to a better section if necessary. We did just that. A pair of $35 tickets in the upper tier were used to get us in the door, but we ended up watching the show about 25 rows from the stage. The arena was about 3/4 full, which was more than I expected given the size of Charlottesville, the high ticket price, and the postponements.
We missed “You Really Got Me” as the beer garden called once we made it in the door, but were settled into our seats one song later for “Runnin With the Devil”. The volume was cranked up to 11 all night long. Since we sat on the side of the stage, it wasn’t as crystal clear as the Springsteen show the other night and you’ll hear that on the video we captured.
The night was filled with nostalgia, cheese, comedy, and kick ass rock and roll. Diamond Dave is all cheese, but he still can sing. His leg kicks aren’t as high, but he has some 6 pack abs. Not bad for a 54 year old rocker. He told a couple stories, the first was about an ex-girlfriend who lives in Staunton. Unfortunately, the story sucked and to add injury to insult, Dave butchered the pronunciation of Staunton. If you are going to go local, then make sure you know how to speak like the locals. He redeemed himself with the second story of the night as he recalled memories of Saturday nights in Pasadena during 1972 (see “Ice Cream Man” video below).
Dave’s antics at the end of “Mean Street” and beginning of “Jump” were just plain stupid, but you expect to take the good with the bad from the original Van Halen front man. He walked around the stage pretending to aim a gun while wearing white sunglasses at the end of “Mean Street” and then wore some revolutionary style hat while waving a large red flag at the beginning of “Jump”. Fortunately, he finished the song on a much better note by wearing his classic sea captain hat while riding an inflatable microphone (video below).
The crowd, at least where I sat, was eating it up. We sat right below a luxury box and it was not your typical suite stuffed with corporate types. There was one twenty something male wearing a black headband and an old school VH tee-shirt that had a nice rip at the arm pit. He was doing his best Eddie Van Halen impersonation on a bottle of Budweiser, leaning over the railing and head banging like nobody’s business. As you would expect, males outnumbered females 10 to 1, but the crowd was much younger than I would have guessed. It was good to see a younger generation taking in one of the classics of rock and roll.
While the cheese and people watching were worth the price of admission alone, it was expected. What I didn’t expect was Van Halen to put on an over the top performance. Highlights from the night included “Beautiful Girls”, “Dance the Night Away”, “Everybody Wants Some”, “Jamie’s Cryin’”, “Hot for Teacher” and “Panama”. But the best segment of the night was Eddie’s guitar solo, which featured “Eruption” (of course), followed by “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love”. Eddie was on all night long. There was no signs of fatigue, frustration, or carelessness. He was having a great time and so were the rest of the band members. While it was weird seeing another bass player other than Micheal Anthony, I got used to Wolfgang rather quickly. He filled in rather nicely on the bass and was a great addition to the background vocals. The band got better and better as the night went on and they rarely strayed from the original versions, which was one of my biggest complaints of The Police tour. “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love” was a perfect set closer as the band sounded best on those songs with strong background vocals. The crowd helped out with the vocals at the end of the song, which was the most energized point of the show.
I had forgotten how great of a rock and roll band Van Halen was in the late 70s and early 80s. They took the torch from Zeppelin as the best hard rock band of their era, and their performance on Friday night showed they still have enough to light the flame (sorry for the cheezy ending, but I figured I would do it in the spirit of Diamond Dave).
WHAT: Waterways Clean Up WHY: Look around. Our trash is all over our streets and side avenues. It flows heavily through our storm water runoff system. A significant amount of our trash flows along our storm water ditches, drains, creeks, and lakes that flow directly into the Lynnhaven River. These waterways serve to protect our neighborhoods from flood and excessive rain by carrying the water out into the river. A negative side-effect of their utility is that these waterways also carry significant amounts of trash and debris. Effective water run-off channels are designed trap most of refuse before it makes its way out. But what happens next? Who cleans it up? What happens next is we go out there and take care of our neighborhood! HOW:
1. Sign Up:
1. Send email to kmcurry AT gmail DOT com, subject: “King’s Grant Waterways Clean Up,” and tell us how many in your group 2. All minors must be accompanied by an adult
2. Show Up: Meet at [TBD] at 8:45 AM
3. Clean Up:
1. You will be provided with equipment; gloves, trash bags, orange safety vests…that sort of thing
2. You will be assembled into clean teams and given a clean up route
3. Your team will walk your route filling up trash bags
4. We will come around and collect the trash bags and take them to the dump and/or recycling center
I consider myself part-Jersey. You see, my whole family is from Jersey. My Mom and Dad were the first to fly the coup a few years before I was born, and moved to the South from the Garden State. I grew up a Florida boy from Jacksonville. However, we spent at least 80% of our vacation time in Jersey visiting family and the Jersey Shore.
One specific memory from our vacations was my first impression of Bruce Springsteen. My cousins who lived in Waldwick were all older than me, and I looked up to each one of them. But, I idolized the cousin closest in age. Everything she did, I had to do. Everything she liked, I liked, except for one thing - this guy, Bruce Springsteen. When I first saw my cousin’s posters of The Boss in 1978, I was seven years old and knew nothing about Rock n Roll. I was busy playing with my Star Wars action figures, so the looks of Springsteen were quite the contrast to Luke Skywalker. I was not impressed.
Time passed and passed. I never became a huge Bruce fan, but I always appreciated his music. Granted, I only knew the hits, but he has always been on my list: the list of classic rockers who I just have to see. The list is getting shorter. I knocked out The Police last fall and Van Halen last night. That leaves U2, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, and CSN, but I digress. Back to The Boss.
A couple years ago, I bought “The Wild, The Innocent, and The E Street Shuffle”. Wow. It’s good. It’s not good, it’s phenomenal. I had no idea.
This leads me to Wednesday. The Boss came to little ‘ol Charlottesville to play the 16,000 seat John Paul Jones Arena. When tickets went on sale, I did not blink at the price. It was the most expensive concert ticket that I have ever purchased by at least $50, and I bought another for my wife.
We were not disappointed. I probably knew about 5 songs from the entire set list and no songs from “Born in the U.S.A.” were played, but it did not matter. I left the show wanting to purchase the latest Springsteen album, “Magic”, and any one of his classics from the 70s. Even at their age, Springsteen and the E Street Band rock. A very simple description, but it’s true. I was told to expect quite a performance, and these expectations were met. Not knowing the majority of the songs, I am not qualified to give a detailed review of the performance, but my favorites from the night were “Prove It All Night”, “Badlands”, and “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out”. However, the show did not seem to meet the standards of hard core Springsteen fans. Backstreets.com, which is the website for a quarterly Springsteen magazine since 1980, writes about the Charlottesville show, “…just as “Roulette” and “Don’t Look Back” started the night on a high at the previous barnburner in Greensboro. “Mary’s Place” turned up again, too — but that’s where the affinity between the two shows end, Charlottesville being one where things didn’t quite click. Hard to say, but it could be that after more than a week of channeling so much into the performance, an emotional drain has understandably taken its toll. Whatever the reason, this was a shorter show, with a less inspired setlist and a performance coming up short of others on this astounding recent run. The penultimate show of a leg has been one to watch on Springsteen tours, often turning out to be the stand-out… not so this time.”.
The show truly transported me back to the 80s. Everyone was dancing like Courtney Cox in the “Dancin’ in the Dark” video. It was hilarious, but even I was at the end!
The sound in JPJ (John Paul Jones Arena) was pretty amazing. We were sitting in the nose bleeds directly across from the stage and the sound was absolutely fantastic for an arena show. I also found out that JPJ has a beer garden! Here I thought that a university facility could not serve beer. Bonus.
All in all, it was a show well worth attending. My only regret is that I didn’t follow my cousins’ musical tastes thirty years ago. Better late, than never I guess.
The first ever ROFLcon happened this past weekend as a two-day symposium on the MIT campus in Cambridge Massachusetts for Internet celebs, academics, and everyday nerds (April 25 and 26, 2008).
The purpose? To find out what Internet Celebrity is, how Memes form, what comprises Internet Culture, how this affects living, breathing human-beings and where this bus is headed?
Let’s back track a moment, for non-geeks, nouveau geeks and casual web surfers, What is a ROFL and what is Meme and who is Tron Guy?
ROFL is Internet slang for (Rolling on the Floor Laughing). A language that has evolved from saving keystrokes in text messaging and instant messaging.
A Meme is an idea that, like a gene, can replicate and evolve. A unit of cultural information that represents a basic idea that can be transferred from one individual to another and subjected to mutation, crossover and adaptation. The concept of meme is from the 1976 book by Richard Dawkins, ‘The Selfish Gene’ and has been adopted by the Internets to refer to the aforementioned.
Tron Guy is Jay Maynard who came into Internet Fame by creating a costume from scratch based on the 1982 film TRON. He created a website detailing the process of creating this most incredible wearable art and thus the viral capacity of the web took over. As friends FORWARD to other friends he became an Internet success. Jay Maynard gets major accolades for staying in costume for the entire duration of the ROFLcon. And, I think he was the most popular micro-celeb.
So why invite the Internet to meet up in person? Many reasons it turns out… 1. Does the Internet function the same in real life as it does online? 2. What is Internet Celebrity in comparison with Hollywood Celebrity? 3. What is rickrolling and lolspeak? 4. Is the Internet really as democratic as it seems? 5. And…what do these Internets look like in person?
Does the Internet function the same in real life as it does online? Well, according to Ian Chillag of NPR’s New Show ‘The Bryant Park Project’ it does. “ROFL con: it’s the entire Internet in one place, in its human forms. Those human forms do what other humans do: they drink beer. Scott Beale of Laughing Squid made it easy last night. He opened up a tab at a pub in Cambridge, and the Internet was thirsty.” I was at this pre-ROFL party, a great place to guess ‘who is that?’. The highlight was meeting the guy who lives in the basement of the popular music venue ‘The Middle East’. Why is his apartment so significant? It just happens to be the background for level 4 in the game Guitar Hero. Apparently this guy became aware that his apartment was the setting for level 4 when friends were over playing the game in said apartment. LOL
So how does Internet Celebrity (or micro-celebrity) compare to Hollywood Celebrity…Alice Marwick (PhD student in the Department of Culture and Communication, NYU) asks ‘Is this the democratization of a formerly elite space, or sensational lowest-common-denominator trash?’ CNN says “The Internet is setting a new standard for celebrity. Fame is no longer about getting “15 minutes,” it’s about becoming famous to 15 people.” David Weinberger from the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society says, “The Internet allows the masses to wrest control of fame away from the traditional media, creating micro-celebrities with the click of a mouse.” For me the discussion turned to applied science with the live performance of Internet mega-celebrity (at least I think she is) Leslie Hall.
Experiencing ROFLcon meant experiencing live RickRolling and speaking lolspeak conversationally. If you know what RickRolling is then your eyes are probably rolling as you read this, if you don’t know what it is then I shall explain it now. Rickrolling is a prank and Internet Meme involving the music video for the 1987 Rick Astley song “Never Gonna Give You Up”. The meme is a classic bait and switch: a person provides a link they claim is relevant to the topic at hand, but the link actually takes the user to the Astley video. The URL can be masked or obfuscated in some manner so that the user cannot determine the true source of the link without clicking (and thus satisfying their curiosity). By extension, it can also mean playing the song loudly in public in order to be disruptive. A person who falls for the prank is said to have been “Rick Roll’d”. (this description is from wikipedia, sorry but it was the best overall definition).
I can has cheezburger…and what is LOLspeak? “LOLinguist Anil Dash defines the LOLcat phenomenon as “the convention of taking pictures of cute animals, most frequently cats, and overlaying absurdest captions on the images.” For the sake of brevity we refer to the dialect of these captions as LOLspeak, But we will not be among the throngs of poseurs to address its morphological intricacy. Instead, today we focus on its primary function as a mode of expression: LOL and its literature are, far from an efficacious little bleat of joy, an agonized cri de coeur.” (from Eve Adams at flakmag.com) I can has (anything goes here).
Is the Internet really as democratic as it seems? Even though many at the Con said that RickRolling was annoying and the pastime of the inept and crude, it reared it’s ugly head during the panel ‘Meme Infrastructures’. During this panel a large screen projected the ‘backchannel’ of questions for the guests posted live by the audience. Audience members could then vote on each other’s posts via laptops and phones in order to ‘favorite’ certain questions. With in twenty minutes the lyrics to Rick Ghastly’s song appeared and, through timely voting, arranged in order. The panel was RickRolled in real time. It was amazing and telling…power to the people.
What do these Internets look like in person? Here is Day 2 at Roflcon, video by Dean Browell—just look at ‘em, you can actually see a real ROFL.
In summary, ROFLcon was a new and enlightening experience. It was like a dream filled with Internet celebrities, lol-jargon, weird little cats saying things wrong and FREE pizza. I loved every minute. Did I learn anything? Well…I’m sure I did.
Like many PR people, I’m still unsure of the best way for my industry to leverage Twitter. Opinions are developing across the board. On one end, Todd Defren made some good points yesterday calling for PR people to go tweet or go home, and on the other, I know a lot of PR people who agree with Kara Swisher in saying that Twitter is relatively unknown outside the echo chamber. I tend to agree most with Sarah Lacy, posting today that Twitter is slowly but surely becoming well-known outside the tech elite, which means we all need to figure it out sooner than later.
Last night, we got a lesson in how social media tools - Twitter in particular - can do a lot of damage to a brand in literally minutes. It’s a powerful example of how big companies, working in partnership, spin their wheels while individuals trash them in the blink of an eye. Here’s what went down:
Several of my Bay Area friends and colleagues planned to join 600 people attending a screening of Iron Man tomorrow night, one night before the movie’s US premiere, hosted by Mike Arrington and TechCrunch. The movie’s been enjoying good buzz, and it seemed like it was about to get 600 more people buzzing. Right? Wrong. Check out this timeline (all times EDT last night):
8:30-9:00: Over 60 comments are posted to the TechCrunch entry, the vast majority expressing outrage. I can’t remember ever seeing a blog post get so many comments so fast.
Things just went downhill for Marvel from there - check Tweet Scan. Social media heavyweights like Jeremiah Owyang (6,562 followers) are tweeting things like “No matter how they approach this, Marvel is going to look bad.” Independent of the Twittersphere, as of this post there are close to 300 comments on the TechCrunch post, including the phrases “boycott” and “most pirated movie ever”, along with the personal contact information of some really unhappy people on Marvel and Paramount’s PR and legal teams who probably won’t get a ton of sleep tonight. Oh, and it’s headed straight to the top of Techmeme. Mathew Ingram, Daniel Terdiman, and Dave McClure are just some of the bloggers commenting on the PR aspects of the situation)
This has to have been tortuous for the Hollywood folks. My guess is that the lawyer had no idea how widely read TechCrunch is, the PR people (if they even know about this whole debacle) are mad at the lawyer, and that Marvel doesn’t have a Twitter presence to join a rapidly expanding conversation. The fact that Mike bought the tickets via Paramount and that the theatre, the AMC Metreon, seems to be on his side, only complicates things. That’s a lot of bummed out PR people at three big companies who would have to quickly act in concert to mitigate this, and so far they haven’t been able to. Who knows what they could have done if they were monitoring Twitter.
Twitter might not be that far out of the echo chamber yet, but I bet that tomorrow morning Marvel will vouch for its power in Hollywood. The 600 people who will be in attendance if the show goes on are people who can build good buzz - or share bad buzz in a flash. Iron Man will be #1 at the box office this weekend, but its reputation may already be irreparably tainted in Silicon Valley.
Last night I made the trek from Cville to see some old friends in Richmond and catch Widespread Panic at the Landmark Theater. Being the dork that I am, I did a quick calculation of how many Widespread shows I had seen and figured it out that this was my 20th. A milestone show - Wow! (ok, I am only kidding). Twenty shows is not much for the average Spreadhead, but I have seen those twenty shows over a 16 year time span. I bought Space Wrangler in 1989 and actually like some of the newer tunes (post 2000) more than the older ones now. This has made seeing Widespread Panic just as enjoyable now as it was in the 90s.
Pre-Game
It had been a long time since I went out in the Fan, and Matt and Julia picked a fantastic place for the pre-game meal and drinks - Sticky Rice. Any place that serves sushi, a can of tots (that’s tater-tots), and tall boy PBR’s automatically gets a gold star in my book. We ordered several different types of sushi. I think our crew liked the Goochland and the Crazy Calamari rolls the best. (The Crazy Calamari is a “monster roll with tempura fried calamari, tamago, cilantro, cucumbers, and sriracha rolled in tobiko and panko flakes”. The Goochland is smoked salmon, goat cheese, and scallions.) A round of car bombs (well Graham had a tequila shot and Julia a sake bomber) and we were off to the show.
Set 1
Pilgrims > Ain’t Life Grand, Airplane > Genesis, Ribs And Whiskey > Goodpeople, Chainsaw City, Her Dance Needs No Body > Chilly Water
I was a bit disappointed with the song selection in the first set. I prefer Pilgrims as an encore or late in the first or second set, but regardless, it is a fantastic tune. ALG and Airplane are two songs I can do without; just my personal preference. The highlights for me were the jam out of Goodpeople and Chilly Water. I had not seen the latter live in 13+ years over a course of 15 shows. Genesis was a bust out; first time played in 155 shows (8/2/06).
Our seats were pretty good: 2nd row on Schools side in the grand tier, which is the first balcony. However, the Landmark Theater is one of the worst places to see a show. The only thing it has going for it is the architecture and interior design. I sat on the aisle in the first set and security paid our section a visit at least a half dozen times to tell people in the aisle to move back to their seats. Come on folks - it’s an Widespread Panic show, not the Richmond Symphony. Every time I have seen a show at the Landmark, this happens, regardless of what section I am in.
Setbreak
For the first time in four tries, we found the concession stand with the soda pop. Why was this critical? Well, the Landmark does not sell beer and we needed a mixer. The concession stand with the soda pop was in a separate room where hot dogs and other 7-11 staples were available. Not that I cared. In fact, the dogs smelled pretty good until some chick hurled after eating one at the table next to us and then proceeded to buy another one a few minutes post-puke.
Set 2 & Encore
Disco > Pigeons > Dark Day Program > You Got Yours > Jam > Tall Boy > Time Is Free > Drums > Climb To Safety, Holden Oversoul > Love Tractor
The Take Out > Porch Song > Postcard
Fantastic setlist. Aside from Dark Day Program and You Got Yours, I loved every choice. I will never tire of Disco, and it is one of the best second set openers. Pigeons was solid, but I actually favor the album version more than any live version that I’ve ever heard (yes, strange I know). The Tall Boy into Time Is Free was the highlight of the night. Took me back to the ARU days and it was only the 18th time ever that Widespread had played it. The long bass intro built up the anticipation - would it be a Time is Free Jam or the real deal? We got the real deal and then some. The Butter Room has the video. We’ll post it in a few weeks.
Post drums could have been better, a lot better. Holden Oversoul was short, too short for my liking, but Jimmy Herring did lead a nice and quick transition into Love Tractor to close the set. The Tractor was disappointing too. It just never reached the climax I was hoping for that I’ve experienced at many shows before.
Looking back at the encore, the highlight was The Take Out. Jimmy played it as close to the original version as I have ever heard. Of course, Porch Song was next and while I was hoping for a Lawyers, Guns, and Money closer, we got Postcard, which ain’t half bad either.
Some random thoughts … The sound was LOUD, real loud or I’m just getting old … I’ve seen three shows with Jimmy Herring on lead and none have blown me away. I am not saying (I mean, writing) he should be ousted like George McConnell, but I’ve been amazed by Jimmy as a member of other bands and hope to experience the same as a member of Panic. Last night and the other two Jimmy shows I’ve seen (9/26 and 27/06) were middle of the road shows out of the 20 I’ve seen now, but they don’t come close to my favorite Michael Houser shows and my favorite George McConnell show … JB flubbed some lyrics last night. Time for the teleprompter?
Regardless, this has always been my experience with Widespread Panic. While most jambands that I’ve “followed” seem to decline steadily over the years, Panic always keeps me guessing. I never know when I’ll be floored or left standing for more. Unfortunately, last night was the latter, but I’ll be back for show #21 the next time they come through town without hesitation.
***
Here is video of the opener, Pilgrims, from last night’s show. We’ll have more in Baked Virginia Jams over the coming weeks.
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