Sully's Pub 09/19/09

“Assurance - the act or action of assuring: as a pledge, guarantee: confidence of mind or manner : easy freedom from self-doubt or uncertainty, something that inspires or tends to inspire confidence .”

This is a pretty apt description of the performance of The McLovins last Saturday night at Sully’s Pub. Seeing the band live at Sully’s always feels like going home, it’s the 4th time I’ve seen them there and I think it’s the 6th time they’ve played the venue, and its intimacy always impresses me. Not a very large room with the stage right in your face, it breaks the barrier between the audience and the performer. I love the power the bands are able to generate here and have come to expect great things and Saturday’s show was no exception.

Due to their drummer not feeling well, Jake was asked to step in and sound check for the head-lining act, The Breakfast. It’s so nice seeing the guys being treated as peers, they exhibit professionalism beyond their years, and the dedication to their music is impressive. As the band started their own sound check, Jordan Giangreco the keyboardist for The Breakfast, remained on stage and for a few brief moments, a nice little jam formed.

Now everything was in place, and the band broke into Deep Monster Trance, a new song inspired by Where the Wild Things Are. Barely a day old at this point, the song is anchored by a rolling rhythm attack, ascending guitar and bass runs that help propel it along. I was so surprised on how fully formed this song already is at this point, the lyrics adding vivid imagery and this is full-on epic psychedelic jam. DMT is a worthy addition to their repertoire and is going to become an audience favorite. Bri brought a chill vibe to the crowd easing them comfortably back down a bit, and then slid effortlessly into the bouncy Virtual Circle. This has become a juggernaut of a song, just savage and clipping along at a furious tempo always tethered by Jake’s unrelenting beat. Jason and Jeff trade licks back and forth between the choruses and really push the song right to the climax. Killing Time continued the aural assault, the band just totally focused on the task at hand, building off each other as the spirals up and out until finally evaporating in a sonic wash of feedback. This song is just a fiend live and is really demonstrative of the bands strengths.

YEM surfaces next, this is a popular selection and the Sully’s crowd responds enthusiastically. The band does a very nice job of stretching this out and making the jam at the end their own. At one time this was a staple for the band and it really focuses on their ability to work with complex rhythms and tempo changes. Now a few months down the road and my opinion is that may have outgrown some of the covers that used to comprise the majority of their show and any of their recent originals stand up just as well as any covers they play. Jake starts counting off Purple Trees and by this time both the band and the audience realize this is a special show. The band is just manhandling the music, showing no fear as they attack each piece and the energy that they are bringing is just phenomenal. This is a textbook show of force and control, no hesitation at all and no loss of focus. During the band intros in the middle of PT, Jake engages the audience and the connection is just alive as they rip through the second half of the song. At one point the members of the band all had their eyes closed, just reacting and acting on what they were hearing, just so tight in the pocket of the jam. After PT they were spent, but as they start to move offstage the crowd urges them on for one more song. The encore is Conundrum, the album title track to their first album and the song that I think is most representative of the album. The song is such a nice cool down, jazzy and breezy then complex and emotional as it drives to a crescendo. This was such a remarkable show, as if it all came together at once, the right band, the right crowd and the right night. Easily one of their best if not the best show I’ve seen them play. The show was bitter-sweet and speaks to the ephemeral nature of the music, no quality audio recording exists. I think there was just a video recording of this performance, so this show now will only live on in the memories of those who were there; this truly was a special night.

“How come that McLovins show sounds so good?” A brief history of concert taping

Today we’re lucky enough to have high quality recordings of concerts as early as hours after the show has ended. Mind you this is a relatively new experience, due to all the improvements in compact recording equipment and the availability of high speed internet connections. Fans can now sit and debate away on the quality of playing or the choice of song lists of any given show as early as the next morning. Bit torrents and music hosting sites have changed the sharing of live music forever.

The recording method of choice now is the “Matrix” mix, which incorporates a blending of a soundboard patch recording with another audience recording, which I feel gives a faithful representation of the show. McLovins fans are blessed with a few very good tapers, Keith who does audience recordings and Dave who I think also makes matrix mixes, but the best recordings in my opinion come from John the Taper. John utilizes a soundboard recording and a set of AKG mics and this gives the ambience of the audience recording with the pure board output sound. His Sully’s pub shows and the BlueBack square show from August are among the nicest sounding live shows I’ve heard in years. Some purists prefer the audience recordings which are much harder I feel to pull off well. Straight audience recordings have more obstacles to overcome, the conditions of the room, wind if it’s an outdoor show, and the screamer or whistler or talker who babbles away during the show. It amazes me when someone sees the mics and still acts like a moron, do they really think that someday they’re going to be sitting down listening to the show and turn to their pal with pride and say “that’s me whistling”? Soundboard recordings offer the truest representation of the music, unfortunately they are almost always clinical sounding and lack any real soul.

The Grateful Dead are the band most responsible for the advent of live taping. As early as the Ken Kessey acid Test shows of 1966, members of the band’s entourage were recording the shows so they could be played back later and analyzed in a clearer light , this led to the explosion in experimentation and improvisation that the band set upon. There then became a need to document the variations in the band’s live performance and stealth recording became the standard in the 1970’s. Many times you would see tapers sneak in taping equipment hidden in wheelchairs or taped to a pair of crutches, there were many ways to stealth tape a show. Finally in 1984 the Dead’s soundman Dan Healy opened up an authorized Taper’s section to allow tapers the chance to get it right and some amazing audience recordings soon followed.

Here’s where I show how old I am getting, I got my first tape trading list from the back pages of Dead Relix as it was called in 1979. It was the “Acme” list of 10 shows, I think I sent off 30 blank maxells and about 3 weeks later got 20 tapes back in the mail. Now there were loose group of traders in the classified ads of Golden Road and Relix, and all you had to do is offer to trade, and somebody would take you up on your offer. The next step in tape trading came with the B&P, where you would send your blank tapes and return postage in a package and some kind person would copy over a show for you. Vines were where someone would send off a show in the mail, you would dupe the cassettes and send them to the next person on the list eventually the interest in the vine would die off and the last person to get it would gift it to someone. All of these trading methods relied on the honor system and for the most part, worked well. This type of trading ran into the late 90’s and early part of this decade with the only real change in the format being from cassette tapes to cd’s. In 2003 the advent of Bit torrent and p2p sharing protocals changed the hobby forever. We now have an embarrassment of riches musically speaking, the choice of a band to be taper friendly seems to do nothing to diminish their music sales. The bands that allow their shows to be tape end up developing a fervent fan base and they allow the connection between themselves and audience to be so much stronger.