So it was off the Gov't Mule concert last nite at the Calvin in Northampton... a lovely small venue, frankly so small that it occurred to me that the auditorium at my old High School was bigger than this place... An awesome, cozy place to see your favorite musicians up close and personal... I've seen (and posted to a clients website) enough Gov't Mule pics that they are probably responsible for a full weeks pay for me over the last year, so I knew the setup... Warren is always on the left as you face the stage... so that's where I picked for our seats... 13 rows back - left side... and sure enuf.. there was 'the man' himself, dead ahead not 80 feet away... awesome... I do use the term "seats" loosely here tho... Unfortunately, they allowed general admission.. which means you had a bunch of rabid fans standing up in front of the stage, which normally is not too much of a problem... their kinda fun to watch actually, but at the Calvin, the first row of seats is at floor level... those lucky, lucky people that were celebrating having gotten front row seats for Mule just a couple days ago now had a perfect eye-level view of the butts of the entire mosh pit... nice... so... of course they stood up... which caused the second row to have to stand.. and the third... all the way to the back of the place... so yeah... I had a nice comfy seat with a great view of the stage but as soon as the music started my view changed to the baggy-assed jeans of the college kid in the row in front of me... damn...
Now.. the concert itself... I'd give it a 6 outta 10... that's right.. me... the number one, almost-stalker level fan of Warren Haynes gives it only a SIX? Well.. it seems I'm a victim of my own cd ripping... see.. in order to keep the cd's from getting ruined being thrown around my truck I rip them all to blank cds, put those in my truck and keep the originals nice and safe in their cases on a shelf... Well.. in the process of ripping them, I also remove any of the songs that don't appeal to me... you know.. the "Jamband" crap that just goes on for freakin' EVER... Yup... I managed to edit out completely the fact that Gov't Mule is first and foremost a Jam band... Well.. it came back to haunt me... the first half of the show was awesome... they stayed pretty true to the cd, even throwing in a few tunes from previous cd's... WOOHHOO... but then they came back from break and proceeded to rip it up... Now.. there is absolutely no doubt that Warren is a "Guitar God"... hell... Rolling Stone has him at number 200 of the best guitarists of all time... Awesome... now.. that being said, just because you can play like the dickens.. doesn't necessarily mean that you should... When each song drags on for 15 minutes, after awhile they start to all get the feel of Inagaddadavida by Iron Butterfly... arguably the worlds longest song... Throw in a 10 minute drum solo and a 5 minute keyboard rant and soon enuf it's time to go home... Now.. to be fair... the college kids in the audience seemed to really love it (and I did too for the first 2 or 3 minutes of it), but come on, enufs enuf... And you can't tell me that everyone enjoyed it all that much... seems to me there was a heck of alot of dancing going on (me included) until they hit the rifs... as Dick Clark would say "I'd give it a 3, it's got no beat and you can't dance to it." In essence it was as if the party stopped for a few minutes while these guys went off on a tangent... I was reminded of the scene from "Back to the Future" where Marty McFly plays at the prom and goes off into a Jimmy Hendricks rage and the 50's prom goers stand in shock at the violence of it all... Yeah... I felt a little like my ears had been assaulted...
So... 6 out of 10... the recognizable songs that they did were awesome... let me repeat that with a 'freakin' thrown in... the recognizable songs were freakin' awesome... but the Jam band - off on a rif - crap... yeah.. I could have really done without that... So... sad to say.. no more Mule concerts for me... I'll wait for the Warren Haynes Acoustic Tour and keep ripping out the Jam band crap from otherwise wonderful Mule cd's...
Later...
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