Bevis Frond - Khyber, Philadelphia 5/25/01 (DVD)

I may have mentioned it once before, but when I have to get to list maintenance, which usually means adding junk, I tend to find it a good time to watch music videos as if I’m bored I can watch along and if I’m not I can listen along. And the long weekend was indeed that sort of weekend, finally some free time to get to it. Anyway the second half of the Bilzen show was the first entry, the second was the above mentioned Bevis Frond DVD, which, as of 2002, was basically a duo touring across the US who decided to add a few electric dates plus drummer to the tail end, and apparently this was the last gig of the tour.

I hope I don’t aggravate one reader here by coming out clean on Bevis Frond - not a huge fan here. I’d poke fun at the vocals, which were quite bad on early releases, but they’ve improved quite a bit by this point, definitely well within tolerable range. I’m also not a big of unplugged sets by anyone, and the two acoustic guitars + vox here didn’t do much for me, another thing that I don’t click with on BF are the songs, and especially the lyrics which can be occasionally tacky or at least blunt. So I was mostly looking forward to the electric set.

And indeed it was the funnest part of the gig, although I had to wonder why Saloman isn’t included in that hallowed Hendrixy hall that includes Trower, Marino, Fossati and the like, as he was basically borrowing from the Hendrix canon lock stock and barrel. At times my friend and I would sing Hendrix songs over the Bevis Frond songs, equivalents of Crosstown Traffic, Red House and others came and went, but I’m easy when it comes to Hendrix clones, hell if a guitarist can pull it off, he’s gotta be pretty good and Saloman is indeed quite the axeman.

But after a good 10 or 15 minutes of electricity, it all started to sound a bit shtick to me, a bit limited and my interest waned a little despite some decent playing (well, the drummer had a diffficult time, but BF’s bass player is quite comptetent). But overall, it’s a good sounding audience recording, certainly well worth tracking down for fans.

Grateful Dead - The Spectrum, Philadelphia, PA 3/24/86 (DVD)

Readers may get that every time I play a later Dead show (defined by me as post 1978) I dread the experience and only do so occasionally, mostly to try and get a feel for the whole experience of this band. So it’s always a surprise (and maybe my first one at that) to come across a decent show in the twilight period. It’s not that the set list is particularly inspired (I could do without the whole “Woman is Smarter” jam thing), but the playing is pretty solid and this is also one of those recordings that seems to capture the audience experience well, including a big spike of sound when Bobby Weir says the f-word (why IS that exactly?) Anyway most of this show reminded me of one a good 5-10 years earlier, even the heinous and tacky keyboard playing doesn’t intefere much. Maybe it’s just that it’s a pretty short show? Maybe Jerry had enough coffee? Or maybe they could be good even this late…

Genesis - Midnight Special 12/20/73 (DVD)
Genesis - Melody, French TV 2/12/74 (DVD)
Genesis - Palasport, Turin, Italian TV 2/3/74 (DVD)
Genesis - Treftepunkte, German TV 1975 (DVD)

The second disc of a double collection of various Genesis videos, many of which have been since upgraded. I probably should have hit the “play all” button, as the menu had almost the entire Firth of Fifth, and being busy, I probably heard it a total of two or three times. Anyway this is all England and Lamb Genesis, I’m quite familiar with the Melody performance from video tape and recognize bits of the others from elsewhere, in fact with all the interview segments, I can imagine where I did see them, these were cut out. But as you can imagine, after starting to hear the same song over several performances, especially something like “The Musical Box,” which I could safely never hear again, it all starts to get tiresome, especially with the amped up melodrama quotient which makes it fairly difficult for me to get into it, even if I remember being a freak over this stuff at one point. I think what I need is a ten year Genesis, erm, hiatus.