“Not only are we playing these shows for the pure pleasure of playing in front of you people tonight but we’re also trying out brand new material in the hopes that some huge magnificent band like Tool will ask us to go on tour or something...and we can show ‘em where it all came from” laughs Belew, tongue firmly in cheek.
The fourth and final evening at 12th & Porter begins with an absolutely explosive version of Level Five. Adrian’s high-octane guitar solo strips the paint off the walls and the tour-de-force continues with a fast-moving TCOL. Speed and fleet-fingered pace are features of a specially truncated version of FraKctured which bursts abruptly into life on the aggressive middle section instead of its usual fade in on the moto perpetuo. Complete with jokey sign-off Belew quips that it was “close enough for...something.”
Close enough might also be said to describe a slightly chaotic rendition of Vrooom and a good natured romp through Dinosaur. The material in development has a more pronounced focus to it tonight than on previous occasions. Clearly, there was still work to be done but instrumentally the main structures are firmly in place.
After this gig, the band’s next port of call would be the start of a tour on July 23rd at Bogarts in Cincinnati.
“Not only are we playing these shows for the pure pleasure of playing in front of you people tonight but we’re also trying out brand new material in the hopes that some huge magnificent band like Tool will ask us to go on tour or something...and we can show ‘em where it all came from” laughs Belew, tongue firmly in cheek.
The fourth and final...
Oh yes you are. The fourth and final warm-up at 12th and Porter opens straight into Level Five without any lead-in, and my goodness does it come out scorching, full of unrelenting forward momentum and drumming that sounds like cannonshots. TCOL is especially dazzling tonight - something about the way Trey plays the bassline really channels the alien-happy-hour spirit of ProjeKct Two, and the guitars dance around each other, perfect and playful in equal measure. And that's the emotion that rea...
Oh yes you are. The fourth and final warm-up at 12th and Porter opens straight into Level Five without any lead-in, and my goodness does it come out scorching, full of unrelenting forward momentum and drumming that sounds like cannonshots. TCOL is especially dazzling tonight - something about the way Trey plays the bassline really channels the alien-happy-hour spirit of ProjeKct Two, and the guitars dance around each other, perfect and playful in equal measure. And that's the emotion that really emerges tonight - playfulness. It started to emerge in the previous night, but didn't stay there the whole time. Tonight it's fully here, carrying the band along. Krimson Blue swings more. FraKctured is extra lean and mean, leaping straight into the heavy distortion section, which also has the effect of clarifying Pat's drumming a bit more - the parts are heavier and more direct, foreshadowing how the quartet would grow over the next couple of years. The playfulness is strong enough that nothing can really derail it, not even a cutout during VROOOM or a Virtuous Circle that dissolves into incompleteness instead of properly ending. Heavy ConstruKction doesn't really want to get going and Belew has to keep counting the band back in, willing the piece into life, but once the Happy riffing begins, everything is fine again, like the struggle never happened (even if Adrian thinks "that needs to be taken out and shot" - no, not the whole thing, just the Heavy ConstruKction part :-) The energy does slip away for good during the last number, but that in no way brings down the overall rating of the night, which was consistently engaging and generally lots of fun.
Written by Jerry Smith
The most consistant show out of the run.
The fourth and final show of the band’s opening 2001 run. All four shows are available in a bundle, at a discount so I went for it. This being the fourth show, it also is more consistent than some of the earlier shows although a couple of the songs were actually performed better at a couple of the earlier shows. The set list is great and all the new songs that were debuted during this run are played here. If you can’t afford or only want one show from the run, this is the one to get.
