11-29-97 Worcester Centrum, Worcester, MA
1: The Wedge, Foam, Simple, TMWSIY-> Avenu Malkenu-> TMWSIY, The Sloth, Ginseng Sullivan, I Saw It Again, Horn, Water in the Sky, David Bowie
2: Runaway Jim*-> Strange Design-> Harry Hood#, Prince Caspian, Suzy Greenberg
E: Buffalo Bill**-> Moby Dick^-> Fire
*Extended beyond belief (58 min.); with a “Weekapaug Groove” jam. #With “Crosseyed and Painless” teases. **Fish’s favorite song. ^Led Zeppelin cover.
This whole show is pretty much a giant mind fuck. The good kind. The Wedge opener is a nice touch, albeit a bit rusty. The Foam, which by this point had become a more rare tune, features awesome 1.0 Trey action and some great work on the keys by the chairman of the board. Foam is definitely a tune that they just don’t do justice with the way they used to…they used to be able to totally deconstruct the jam and then build it back into such a frenzy. Alas, it’s still awesome to be able to listen to these older versions. Anywho, I love a Simple…any time any place that’s what I say. I am also a big fan of TMWSIY/Avenu. The way it goes from pure bliss to pure dance-party is the shiz. The Sloth falls into that 'heavy-psychedelic" category and is placed nicely in this set. A bluegrass break until they get uber weird again with an early Saw it Again…these 97 versions are just genius. The Bowie to close the set is top notch mindfuckery.
This is the Jim to end all Jims I suppose. I always wondered if they planned to take the jam out to an hour or if it just happened. There’s definitely some lulls in the action in the jam where it’s about to fizzle, but one of them steps up a tempo, rhythm, or theme and they just jump right back in. I highly admire the balls this band used to have. Strange Design is a weird tune to follow that jam up with, but the name sure fits the theme for the night, as they seemed to have been trying to create quite a unique soundscape. The Hood and the Capsian are both brilliant. Well played, excellent tension and release, great soaring guitar work…just awesome.
The drum beat to Buffalo Bill is one of my favorite Jon Fishman creations. It’s one of his patented-style rhythms that at first sounds like a jazzy fill until he starts repeating it at an odd place until you finally realize that he’s somehow creating an actual beat with this weird, almost empty, part. I just looked it up and was surprised to see that they’ve only played this 11 times ever. I guess as I have seen it a bunch of times I assumed it would have a higher count. Guess I have just been lucky. And the next time this song would be dusted off would be in the exact same place, exactly one year later. They have fun for a couple minutes trying to play Moby Dick, then they blow the place up with a scorching Fire. Pun intended bitches, this show rocks.
I was on the floor at this show with my older brother, and we must have over toked … I literally slept a good section of that Jim away on my chair, no joke.
Funny thing, I met this dude Steve at the Clifford Ball (who I coincidentally ran into again at the Went, and we then exchanged numbers & caught some LoS & moe. shows together in late '97) … and he wasn’t at the show, but told me that when he heard the tape of this show, he fell asleep during the Jim as well.
