The first half of the Disco Biscuits lived up to every expectation I had for the band and then some. The setlist went like this: The Bridge, Vassillios > Bombs > Run Like Hell (unf) > Hot Air Balloon* (ending). It started with an unreleased straight up no chaser ballad, but a good one. And continued with "Vassillios" that seemed unsteady at first , you could almost watch their brains ticking as it noodled over to jazz but then it took off exactly the way jam bands want to, as it took on "Run Like Hell" (yeah, that one) elements of prog and hard rock ca,e together and dissolved and by the conclusion of the firsts set, "Hot Air Balloon" . Exactly why we pay our money and take our chances in Jam and more.
The Disco Biscuits are the Philadelphia jam behind Camp Bisco, dubbed "trance fusion" which I kinda get: it means Aron Magner plays synth, but doesn't take into account that they have a killer rhythm section part and a wide wide wide range of influences. Let's say funk is to DB what country is to Phish, they don't actually play it but they are informed by it.
This is all very very brainy stuff, and it can get a little draggy as Jon Gutwillig (aka the Barber) to catch fire and he does but unless you listen to jam a lot more than I do it is hard to see why "Run Like Hell" thru to "Bombs" blows up so big, it is mesmerizing and silly at the same time, the synth is pure noodle and doodle but slowly it takes hold of the rhtyhm section and they all seem to be moving from one spectrum to another, on a dime.
Disco Biscuits play like a bi-polar Hamlet: they can't quite make up their mind where they are going but when they decide they kill it. Who thinks of "Run Like Hell"? Right? I mean if all the Pink Floyd wannabes why this one? But it blasts them through a mental shell and lands them at the instigation to "blow it up", They cap the set with an excellent "Hot Air Balloon" and the hour plus opening set is brilliant.
By the way, there is an excellent Disco Biscuits Forum at Phantasytour.com. Man, are DB fans a grumpy lot but very well smart, and you might wanna check out a more informed opinion than mine. Because,I am not a fan of jam because I am not a fan of noodling. There is too much fucking about for too few rewards: a great artist like, say, Armstrong, had already reached his final destination on "West End Blues" and jam is the other end, it doesn't know where it is going. But the rewards when it does right are immense.
By jam standards this was a brisk, smart, tight set. They go on stage at 11pm tonight and it is sold out. But I had to leave early today (work in the morning -I left 11ish) but I am seriously thinking of going the bucks and checking em out again. This is the jam band to beat.
Grade: B+