B is for Bullsh*t and this Bullsh*t's NOT for me

First the Pope dies as an eclipse hits and now Cookie Monster's telling us to eat healthy??!!

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So the latest issue of Rolling Stone has this feature on the 'The Immortals" with big name artists writing on 100 legendary artists. such as Elton John writing on Eminem, Dave Matthews writing on Radiohead, Trey Anastasio on Frank Zappa, Beck on Hank Williams, David Bowie on Nine Inch Nails and Mos Def on Miles Davis.

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We're watching Max, a big loveable Rottweiler that looks like this:

I think he misses his daddy/Joy's brother who's on vacation next week. But he's a good dog. I saw a shooting star while walking him tonight. I saw a commercial years ago stating that petting a dog lowers a person's blood pressure. Knowing that and being more in tune with how you feel when you interact with a dog you love, it's neat to see how calming it is when you haven't been around a dog in years.

Well, unless Grandma's seeing this when she comes over...



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Is it me, or does this make sense in some weird way?

Like, if Buddy/Syndrome grew older and mellowed.


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For anyone interested, below is another 'Below Day After" blow-my-mental wad long review of a concert I saw last night.

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Gentlemen, meet YOUR new band: Umphreys McGee


Steve and I went to Lansing last night to see this band Umphrey's McGee, a 'jam' band from Chicago on the circuit for years now. Neither of us saw them, heard good things, jammed some tunes at work and were intrigued at their playing ability on record. At Temple Club, like a St. Andrews with a tiny stage inset in the wall, maybe 3 feet wider than the Blind Pig stage,

I've been trying to crystallize exactly what I truly feel about this, but I think I came to this:
I honestly believe I have never seen a better genre-crossing and live performance by a group of musicians/band ever in my life. An absolute Event.

Darren, you would have been reduced to jelly. I swear to you, this ain't Dave "the comedically exaggerating music fan messenger" here. You would have been sobbing on my shoulder. Take every solo and dual guitar solo ability by Randy, Eddie, Trey, Maiden, Priest, NightRanger, Skynyrd, Holdsworth, Santana, Widespread, Lynch, Alex, Yngwie, Belew, Fripp, Paul Gilbert, Howe, SRV, Hackett...take that ability, take those chops, and put it into a groove/'jam' band premise...with all the meter changes, stop on a dime dynamics, fun, hippy vibe and free-lovin' solid confidence...and that was Umphrey's. Control and mastery on their instruments to die for.

Blistering dual lead finger tapping solos at times. It was like getting brain surgery on yourself without anesthesia, but the Dr. was so good it didn't hurt anyway. You felt your neuron's being played with like Lego's while looking at the assistant nurse and exclaiming "this Doctor's great!" Trading solos and mimicking each other. Having fun with the audience. But it wasn't a wad-blow "look at us doing this!" thing, it just was great players having a ball. Complete mastery. I can't imagine what these guys' actual limits on their instruments might be. They play like they could play anything by ear.

They're Notre Dame music students who put a band together out of Chicago in the late 90s. 2 guitars, bass, keys, drummer, percussionist. They started as a Phish cover band, and evolved into their own thing. They never stopped playing in their first set. I've never witnessed two guitarist play as fast as any "guitar god" for that long in a show, effortlessly, and with taste and musicality. There was nothing for anything's 'sake'. It wasn't always guitar god pyrotechnics either, but it would/could happen at the right times. Every guy in the band was like a prodigy, but it NEVER felt like robots or mannequin Guitar Institute shred students. It was absolutely astounding. Total "who ARE these guys??" I've never seen a band with such solid time. You'd think the drummer was listening to a click, but he wasn't. He was marble solid.

So I have to say...
With all respect and sincerity to the fact that every band is and should always be true to their own natural energies, characters... and that bands and their music should be judged on the personae of themselves, that it's not a competition in the end, yadda yadda yadda...

...With all that disclaimed, Brutha's...Umphrey's wiped the effin' floor with almost any band I've ever seen. And it was done without any attitude that registered as such. I felt like I saw a musical natural wonder, a New Guard, a "this is what can be done in this genre". Steve and I were both commenting on how strange it was to feel so ecstatically proud of 6 absolute stellar musicians for having found each other. To get 6 people with absolute natural prodigy-like supremacy on their instrument, to put it together, and it actually WORKS aesthetically, and they ALL understand and 'get it'...It's soo rare. If it was lab coat sterile prog-jammy, the crowd wouldn't have been there, the word spreading. It was organic. If Trey went to Yngwie Insitute.

Brendan, Andy, Darren, Hupp...it was the '4 Disgraces' from cross street after 10 years of touring/playing together. Imagine them on the road on the Bonnaroo circuit. Like Allman's mixed with some Prog chops.

Steve put it a great way:
All those early 90s shows in small clubs that Phish played before they hit the big theater and arena phase, these shows coming out now on the live CD's where you go back and read that there was 100 people in this 700 seat club in Texas, paid $10 and they pulled a 70 minute Tweezer that went down in history among the live archives; before they started exploring the space and began letting go of the blistering unison runs, learning about less is more thru application; the absolute zenith of the band being nothing but 110% Burning in the absolute peak of hitting their threshold of chops, commitment, and loyalty to being the best player possible and tightest band possible; before marriages, before kids, before re-inventing themselves, before the natural toll of the grind sets in and it's -still- like being on vacation but you know every nook and cranny of the island now and know where to get what you need; the fountain of eternal vitality in the playing still; old enough to know the taste, young enough to still burn the musical candle at both ends.

Made me think it must have been in those early 90s when people walked out of seeing Phish completely aghast at what they just saw a band do (and how it still isn't globally acclaimed just yet). You felt like you're in on a secret. Yet Umphrey's also learned from the 'less is more' phases of their heroes too so THAT's included as well.

When you feel like you've seen every ism done and re-done by every band, and a band who can shred would most probably bore you after an hour because it's an emulation of the same arpeggio runs every shredder does...I could not believe how I was not bored ever. These dudes were playing unison Mach 3 leads with fret board finger dancing that made my hands hurt just watching. DickTight. These guys can play anything they ever could imagine. They went into Zep's "How Many More Times" and did it right, it wasn't computer correct, covered Beastie's 'Groove Holmes' and chugged it along, and closed the encore with a blistering 'Cherub Rock" by the Pumpkins that of all people, if it passed Bekkala's seal of approval, you know it was executed right. (Pumpkins is Bekkala's religion) I found myself shaking my head in smiling pride at these guys, can't count how many times Steve and looked at each other with expressions of "this can't be happening, they just did NOT do that solo/transition/run that good and clean like it was doing brain surgery blindfolded." I don't think I saw them break a sweat.

I'll let you listen to it because after the show at the souvie booth you could buy the show on disc for $20. 10 minutes after they left the stage. And it sounds great.

I felt like I was witnessing what southern Cal people in the 70s saw when they saw Weather Report in a small club, or the fusion funk bands with Tony Williams where the people on stage were truly the crème of the crop. This was the benchmark. This is the gold standard, yet no vibe of cockiness or "we're proving to you that we can outplay any band around" came off them. They simply are amazing.

The vibe of the lot and the audience is as fiercely loyal yet mellow as any Phish or WP show I been to. We frisbee'd with strangers, it was great. (Not so usual really). Steve and I remarked how there was something unique about the whole vibe. It was very 'Midwestern Hippie' to create a term, yet I never thought of any shows having a regional parameter like that. I never perceived it until last night. The girls at the souvie booth, the merchandise manager guy, soundguys, the band when they shook hands after the show from the lip of the little stage... it felt like Michigan, Ohio, Chicago. Like a really cool party in your home state/hometown. I can't really explain it, but it did feel different, more familiar in some weird way. The Umphrey's community is Chicago/Midwest born. The jokes they'd crack between songs, the slightly weird encyclopedic knowledge of so much pop culture stuff. Like Phish, but from this part of the country.

So overall its maybe like a "The Midwest Chapter of The Bonnaroo League"? :). The southern chapter, the New England Chapter, the West Coast chapter... we all know those regions have their own unique isms to their vibe and crowds, not in just music fans. Southern hospitality and the like. To be in one that felt so Midwestern was quite impressive, because, well, I've never been in one (or realized it could exist). And you don't realize you haven't until you're in and notice something feels and flows different at this show than the other shows you go to. To get real dippy about it, the values and personae of the band in question will relay and have influence on the people who are attracted to it. Like Attracts Like.Umphrey's felt like "Ours" if that make any kind of sense at all.

We Michigan kids who love our classic rock, but also the Metallica and Rush and Van Halen and Maiden; we get the groove thing, we also get the chops and metal glory thing. Every artist raves about the Detroit audience, from metal to Bonnie Raitt. We're smart music consumers on average seems to me from the feedback artists give. We 'get' alot of it, all over the map. We party to the party jams in the summer, we stay inside in winter and study and zone in on the shredding and esoteric epic stuff. VH and ACDC in the summer park, Xanadu and Floyd in the winter. Well, the guys in Umphrey's grew up doing the same thing. And by the way, they can play all of that shit. Then decided "hey, we should start a band and play like all that stuff we love."

Next time they hit close by, you guys are going. I swear to you. I will pay.

What eff's me up the most is that the merch guy said the show was "good, but not a great show."
How a show where the whole floor crowd was boogy'ing so hard that the floor of the place was bowing in time with the songs, I don't know. I mean I know that he has more perspective being on tour with them, but if that was an okay show, I'm scared at what a stellar show by his standards would be.

I guess I'll see at Bonnaroo. The moon is gonna crash in to the Earth at Bonnaroo because the Moon will want to get close to the stage to see this stuff. As much as it blew me away, it made me even love the other bands I go see more. Though Umphrey's from a technique and ability standpoint could do anything WP, Phish, String Cheese could because they simply have the hands and brains. They played so pure, honest, and happy in being themselves that it only made me appreciate those other bands more for what they uniquely bring to the stage.
WP- Southern Shade
Phish- Lumberjack Intellectual
String Cheese - the Colorado Air
Umphrey's - the Midwestern appetite
imo.

I wanted to buy every souvenir they had. I'm going thru my day rooting for them in my head, it's so fun. I've never seen a band exude almost every musical appreciation I have in one offering like this. It just kept coming; "ok, this guitarist is a 7 trick pony, NOPE, now he's a 10. Ok, that's probably all I need to expe...wait, nope, he can play that kind of stuff too?, holy carp, ok, so he's a 15 trick pony. Wait, what the hell was THAT?"

Brutha's, I have been renewed. I think you will be too.