, attached to 1999-10-08

Review by n00b100

n00b100 Set 1 is really short (not even an hour long!), kicking off with a shredded-out Piper and an AC/DC Bag that opts for some Mike-driven funkiness but doesn't break out of Type I before giving way to Suzy Greenberg. The rest of the set is fine, but ends with one of those late-90s Antelopes that I do love so much, spacey and relaxed before building to the usual nasty Antelope climax.

Set 2 starts with Halley's Comet, which was a pretty good sign from 1997 to 2000, and indeed this bad boy kicks into a buzzing, hazy jam, a wicked Trey loop dancing around the music. Page is indeed doing some damn fine work, but it's kinda hard to tell without headphones, but Trey is absolutely wailing away, as much in Rock God mode as he is in the Prague Ghost. The jam finally strips away into something slicker and more relaxed, and with more loops flying about the band closes things out and it's Tweezer time. Tweezer in the late 90s was taken at a slower tempo, but it's almost self-parody how slow this version is, so thick you'd have to cut it with a meat cleaver. Trey hammers out some heavy metal chords about halfway through to spice things up, but otherwise this is a very Fall '99 jam, laid-back and Page-driven and content to dive into a pool of effects and weird noise. Whether or not you have the stomach for that kind of music is entirely up to you; I still love it (though there's certainly a bit less shade to it than you might expect), and so I can enjoy these sorts of narcoticized jams.

Bug and Fee come next, then a lovely Hood that floats along on a cloud before exploding in a trill-laden climax, before a true surprise in a one-off cover of We're Not Gonna Take It. Tom Marshall does the lead vocal, and does a fine job of it, but it's hearing the band pound out the famous "listening to you" finale that's the real treat here. You'd think that'd be the closer for the set, but CDT does the job instead (I don't really like that call, actually - why bother trying to follow that finale?), and a glorious Coil > Reprise combo ends things.

This is pretty much Fall '99 in a nutshell - surprising setlist calls, tons of spaciness, and the sound of a band perfectly comfortable with the ambiance they'd developed over the last two years. This shouldn't be your first stop when sampling this tour, but it should definitely be *a* stop.


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