From: Charlie Dirksen
7/13/94 Big Birch Concert Pavilion, Patterson, NY (Rvwd 3/95) What
a second set!! It is must-have, in my opinion.. very
very lively and unique. One of the funniest, sickest Possums.. Cavern
with Wilson lyrics ... the ending of NICU has what sounds
like a severe BBFCFM tease, only slower, and it is in the midst of
this mess that Trey breaks out Tweezer. Very sick opening.
Fish pounds it out more than usual, and Trey does some cute rain-drop
licks on the 'doc after the first verse. Crowd sings a'long
a little, or so it sounds. The exaggerated lyrics crap is in this version
strongly, and Mike really wails all around. This has got to
be one of the more interesting of opening segments.. The short jam
that transpires before the Ebeneezer lyric was especially
cool, with some funky stuff from Mike and Page in particular. Usual
chaos after the Ebeneezer lyric, with Fish screaming and
Trey speaking/talking inaudibly. The jamming at the beginning of this
version sounds Manteca-esque. Very, VERY sweet, but
unfortunately a bit too repetitive for my tastes. Luckily it soon gets
more groovy and weird around the 7 minute mark or so.
After a minute, this stage of the jam acquires a jazzy feel with everyone
just tooling around. At nearly the 9 minute mark, there's
a severe Woody Woodpecker tease from Trey, and soon after this, the
jam segues MAGNIFICENTLY into the jam in Julius!
This version is worth acquiring just for this segue. By the ten minute
mark, Julius is being played. The Julius is as you've heard it
before (unless you've heard the Halloween '94 version, which is SICK),
but has an enormously sweeet segue back into
Tweezer at like the 15 and a half min mark or so. The jam has a groovy
"I Wish" feel to it, at least I think that is the Stevie
Wonder tune. This jam sounds great, and I wish they had actually performed
the whole tune "I Wish", as they did on 10/30/85,
instead of merely teasing it. Seguing out of this jam comes a fantastic
"I Know A Little" jam that is really hot!! It swings like hell,
but alas only for about a minute.. This segues at nearly the 18 minute
mark into a BBFCFM that is unlike any other version for
the first few minutes.. it is in a bluegrass/country style (i.e., SOAMule)!!
Very amusing... there are some really well-timed
YEEEEEE-HAAAAWs from everyone.. Out of this BBFCFM there's a segue
back into Tweezer in glorious fashion. There is
some bewildering, crazy distortion effects going on at the same time
that the Tweezer theme is being returned to. Anyway, this
final segment of Tweezer (outside of the reprise) is cool but doesn't
last very long before they segue into Mound. The Reprise at
this show was standard. As far as this show's Tweezer goes, I have
to give it an above average rating for the spectacular
segues.. the I Know A Little jamming was fun, but it was sooooo brief.
Gotta give the Tweezer a 6.0 . Definitely above
average, but definitely not one of the better versions, in my opinion
of course (B). The SLAVE at this show was great, I
thought, with what sounded like nearly a "Vibration of Life" at the
beginning of the quiet pre-climbing segment of the tune. Suzy
had a great slave-tease in it, too, which was amusing.