5 nights of Widespread Panic at the Beacon Theatre
Thursday, 27Feb20
So, Thursday morning I was at the gym (yes, I occasionally wake up at 5:30 to hit the gym, you may be surprised to know!) and there was this dude chugging pretty hard on the treadmill and every few minutes he would hop off the still-spinning machine and bounced over to the corner of the room to lift weights and do push-ups before hopping back on and running again. I suppose people do this sort of thing, but I’m pretty sure I burned a few extra calories just watching him and I can only imagine how his body felt. That was the image — this fellow cramming in as much punishing exercise as his body could take in his time at the gym — as I tried to keep up with Widespread Panic during the opening set of their 5-night run at the Beacon Thursday night. They opened with a what-else-were-they-gonna-open-with? “Porch Song,” the audience maybe caught a little off guard when the lights went down shortly after 8pm, but ready to scream “having a good time” when the moment arrived. There’s no other way to open a rather historic marathon run than with your most anthemic no-complaints WSP-perfectly-encapsulated tune like Porch. From there, the band seemed to be pumping iron and doing extreme cardio all at once, the rest of the first set one catch-your-breath blast of sweaty intensity after another. There’s the sort of “elegant” Widespread and there’s the pure chaos version of Widespread and the first set Thursday was firmly in the latter category. The lights with their low-hanging, angles-acute-and-obtuse array only added to the feeling… I mean it felt like every single light was being used at once, anarchy on stage and above it. The leader of this energy was, undoubtedly Jimmy Herring who was that guy on the treadmill, trading in heartbeats-per-minute for notes-per-second and saturating the Beacon with so.many.notes. The band seemed to barely be able to keep up, leaving things messy and weird in jams during “Rebirtha” and “Greta.” As much as he could, Dave Schools was a calming influence and the highlights of the set (for me) seemed to center around his rudder, steering the feeling-unwieldy ship through rough waters. The backwards intro jam into “Stop/Go” was the first hints of what kind of magic awaits the crowds at the Beacon this week. The outro jam was equally impressive, almost like a reverse of the intro, the spooling and unspooling of the song’s themes mixed with smart full-band improv was a good signal of where the band is at these days. As if to prove the point, the Proving > Bust It Big > Ground was so much on-the-treadmill/off-the-treadmill heated-pulse noise, I felt I might bust a vein trying to keep up. In a good way, of course! The Proving Ground entering its free-jazz wall-of-sound phase felt especially glorious. Only Panic can create a sound where the bassist is playing something that could easily have backed a James Brown track, the lead guitarist is playing pure metal shred, the drummer is locked in southern rock rhythm and then, on top of all that, JB’s slide guitar sounded like an alto saxophone cutting through the noise Pure Panic. A bit of cool trivia about the first set, three of the songs in the setlist started their lives as standalone instrumental tunes, including the set-closing “Action Man.” Cool!
Somewhere in the middle of the second song of the second set, the band seemed to turn the corner. The song was a relatively-rare version of Neil Young’s “Walk On,” the moment was Jimmy’s first solo and maaaan, what a glorious solo it was. This was elegant Jimmy, not the put-your-head-down-and-charge-ahead Jimmy Herring, but the looks-ahead-sees-the-spot-and-gets-there Jimmy Herring, the whole band following along with his elegant lead, long notes and short notes, a story unfolding, not at odds with the rhythm section, but totally at one with it. He upped the ante with a second solo in the tune later on that was just as great. The lights matched the focus as well, the mix of beams and the sort of artful “track lighting” effects augmented the music, the colors finding all the nooks and crannies of the historic theater and filling the space beautifully. The rest of the set was more or less perfect, I thought. Starting with “Walk On,” it was marked mostly by very good made-’em-their-own covers, from the Vic Chestnutt chestnut “Blight” to the NRBQ blazer “Help Me Somebody” to the fuck-yeah-funker “Pusherman” to the encore Tom Petty, it was all Panic, but it was also their influences, their insides on the outside as it were. Perhaps surprisingly from a high-level setlist view, the highlight was the jam out of “Help Me Somebody,” a jam that slowly morphed from the tune’s rollicking straight rock into a full-band this-is-what-we-do Widespread gem. This wasn’t a guy on a treadmill sweating his ass off for the purpose of sweating his ass off, it was a team moving the ball up and down the field with the skill and chemistry that only a veteran squad can give. I feel like I am seeing “Pilgrims” pretty much every time I see WSP now and I have absolutely zero complaints. I’m not sure they have a better song than Pilgrims, the lyrics get me every single damn time (“We listen… if it feels good, we shake” is an all-timer line) and the arc of the song that matches the lyrics, building to a glorious peak. Good fucking lord, that’s a song. No complaints there. “Pusherman” :was a funk-party delight, the room just bounced when they started it up and it sunk in what was going down, it was the Beacon Theatre and its best. I kind of smiled about the fact that the band had a big bustout of Pusherman at Irving Plaza back in 1995, how it was my first Panic roadtrip, an amazing weekend with stories spiralled within spirals, almost exactly 25 years previous, not too many blocks down through the heart of Manhattan… did they know that when they played it? Highly doubtful. But that didn’t stop me from summing up the entirety of my Panic-going experience from then to now, before and after, all while dancing my ass off. Can’t close much better than “Conrad,” although I guess I have seen better before I have zero complaints about that second set, the show was a more-than-solid start.
Gooood shit.
Friday, 28Feb20
Sometimes its fun to start at the end of the show, mix it up, you know? That feels appropriate with last night’s heater from Panic, night 2 of 5. The encore of the night, after all the boogie and fist-pump and rage had been rocked thoroughly out of the crowd, the encore was Blue Indian > Climb to Safety. A perfectly nice, fuck-yeah roof-raising encore. What struck me this morning about these two songs, what they have in common, is that they both reference something “under the bed” in their lyrics. In one case, under the bed is where the scary stuff in your life lurks, the monsters, literal or metaphoric, that keep you up at night… those monsters live under the bed, we all know this, the shit of nightmares. The other reference to “under the bed,” in “Blue Indian” is that it’s the place where you hide the good stuff, the stuff that fills you up and keeps you warm and happy. “We got a bottle ‘neath the bed, keep our spirits fed.” I mean, there’s no better way to sum up Widespread Panic than those two images, those two things that might be under your bed at night. The scary-as-fuck monsters and the spirit-feeding good stuff. Panic delivers on both fronts, and when they’re at their best, they do it in equal measure. Damn, did they do it last night.
And while I’m making lyrical links, let’s dwell on that word “spirit.” That word popped up a couple times last night and, damn what a word it is. Spirits can be the ghosts, good or bad, the lingering memories of people loved lost or the the ghosts that haunt. Damn, there are spirits floating around each and every single Widespread Panic show. Spirits can be your mood, high spirits, low spirits, how you feeling, my friend? Last night, the spirits were freakin’ high, the room was really abuzz with the energy of friends dear, close, far, new, old, very old, right on down. Spirits were high. And, of course, spirits is booze, the melted whiskey in your hand to the overpriced double tequila you can get at the Beacon. No band embodies a boozy, spirit-filled night quite like WSP, You could feel that in the air last night. And so it’s no surprise that the signature lyrics of the night were those in Blue Indian “we got a party going on, many spirits strong” and that bottle under the bed to “keep our spirits fed” and, perhaps more poignantly, in a monster, monster, always-monster “Surprise Valley,” JB howling about how the “spirits move in all things” the music and the lights and the pure vibe like ghosts and good moods and, yes, liquor, floating into all the souls in the room. The spirit moves in all things.
That’s all a long-winded way of saying, what a damn good Panic show last night! The first set was of a classic setlist-barely-tells-the-story type. The tight play of the second set from Thursday carried over and was built upon right from the start. You could tell this was an improved, well-oiled machine from the start. Pretty much everything they touched was slamming! There were spirits dark and spooky and there were spirits of transcendent light, all coming from the same band, sometimes at the same time. So much fun! In terms of improv and pure play, the “All Time Low” and the extended all-at-once awesome jam that ensued was an easy highlight, roughened only by a less-than-stellar transition into Junior, a rare hiccup on the night. “You Got Yours” was just nasty, booming, darkest-of-the-dark Widespread Panic. Good grief, miles from the first set Thursday.
The second half was a statement set, with a The Band doublet and two back-to-back sandwiches, like devouring a chicken parm and then going back for the meatball sub right afterwards. You know the band is in the right place when you spend no time thinking about the individual members. When you bite into the sandwich, a really fucking good sandwich, it’s the symphony of the individual components working together, that’s where the deliciousness comes from, not dissecting the individual chicken, sauce, cheese, roll on their own. The Surprise Valley > Bear’s Gone Fishing > SV was a symphony of flavors, bass, drums, guitars, keys, all in perfect concert with each other. Spirits were summoned, spirits were drank, spirits were high. The following Driving > E on a G > Driving was even better, superlative Panic. I impressed myself when I had the this is E of G, right? thought to myself when they dropped into the pretty-darn-rare instrumental. Forget the E’s and G’s, it was played to a fucking T and the way it fit in the middle of Driving, a big, tasty meatball, bursting with subtle flavors… that’s was {Italian chef’s kiss}. Only 4 sets in, at this point, the band had already moved from adrenaline-rush flurry to elegant-but-powerful beast. The mix of flavors in the second set last night, from party-down with the Ophelia > Shape I’m In, to the prog-folk unfolding of the Driving sandwich to the psychedelic musical hallucinations of the Surprise Valley suite… all very impressive. And it should be noted that the lights were magnificent last night, colorful tiles bouncing around the back and ceiling, like cracking into a geode, then dazzling starlight, then multihued curtains of color, and inventive color combinations of beams going in every angle possible. When they finally got to the set-closing “Chilly Water” it almost felt like too much, like you’ve given us all that and now we have to tackle balls-to-the-walls rock and roll. Now all those notes, all that sound, all of it felt earned, by the band and by the crowd. The knockout punch served up by so much strategic jabbing, and blammmo! Do they test old theaters like the Beacon for withstands-Chilly-Water structural integrity? I have to admit, I gave it a second thought. A spirited end to a spirited show, an incredible two night run in New York Ci — wait, what, there are still three more to go? Damn, that’s nuts.
Saturday, 29Feb20
{catches breath} damn, this is tiring…
How does the saying go? Never miss a leap day show? Something like that.
The first two nights were characterized by long stretches of road trip Panic, songs tied together with puzzle-solving transitions and are-we-there-yet? out there explorations. The Saturday night hit of this still-in-progress 5-night run was more of a punchy party time affair. Songs wasted little time getting going, got there, did there thing, got the crowd in a frenzied frenzy and then flipped over to the next. This was dance party Panic at its best, the Beacon boogie woogie on a Saturday night.
The spirit of Michael Houser continues to dwell in the room at each and every WSP show I’ve been to and somehow this was felt especially acutely last night. The opening Space Wrangler, a song I strongly associate with Houser’s leaps-and-bounds climb and sharp jabs to the finish line, felt kind of, I dunno, weird last night. The punch never came, or came in the wrong spot with a softened edge. Each set featured a 3-song stretch that came off like a lull to me, possibly because they were each a trio of not-old-school tunes that knocked me out of my nostalgic reverie for a minute, which is to say, the lulls may have been my own perception or expectation for the night. Still, the opening set was all about one thing to me: the Machine > Barstools & Dreamers, quite simply my favorite damn thing that Widespread Panic does and, last night, executed as well as you could want. The stop-start sludge funk of the instrumental Machine came at just the right moment, hit all the right marks, got everyone into a lather and then slid into the Barstools with expert ease, juicing every drop of adrenaline out of my endocrine system, ready for fight and flight. Barstools was what I was waiting to hear, it’s that song for me, one of my favorites by any band and they pretty much nailed it last night; the singing, the ba-dump-dump bass riff, the tempo rises and falls, the squeal of the electric guitar and the barroom whirl of the keyboards all mixed in a a cocktail shaker, vigorously jostled to perfection and then poured smoothly into a tall glass of ice, one sip, two sips, slam the whole damn thing, good lord, that is delicious. Let’s, as they say, get this party started. Capping it with an audience-wig-flipping Flat Foot Flewzy, I believe their second NRBQ cover in as many nights, felt thematically appropriate as well as a killer elevation of the energy from the Barstools. That final 1–2–3 push at the end was a show-maker for me.
The second set also had a two-sided thing going on. For the most part, the Saturday-night-doozie energy persisted, with an inventive, interesting jam out of Blackout and an equally exploratory Airplane kicking things off. I love “Holden Oversoul” almost as much as I love “Barstools and Dreamers” and so that was a set-making choice for me in the 3-slot. Paying tribute to the extra day, the middle of the set featured three songs with “time” in the title, but besides that little dollop of trivia, I lost a little steam during that stretch. The closing Ride Me High > Red Hot Mama made JJ Cale and Funkadelic sound like they were made to go together and, tied in with the first-set-closing Flewzy reflected the drunken, orgiastic bacchanalian energy that you might expect from a 3rd-of-5, Saturday night Widespread Panic show in New York City. Somewhere in that RMH/RHM mix, I think the weekend reached its peak energy, the audience (finally) giving back to the band exactly as much as it was getting from them, the general, sweaty, smiling mood in the theater turning to a can I put you down for another extended Beacon run next year, then? kind of thing, and I have to concur, by the end of the second set, it was starting to feel like not just a NYC run, but a full-fledged thing. Let’s hope it’s so. The ghost of Michael Houser returned for the encore, if I can’t help but think of Mikey during a show-opening Wrangler, I sure as hell can’t not reminisce about him during a “This Part of Town” encore, thinking of him singing the line “don’t give up, ’cause where there’s love, there’s hope” gives me the chills and is giving me the chills right now. Turning that around and bouncing into a roof-raising “Mr Soul,” I believe the second Neil Young cover of the week, did feel like a bit of a spirit-raiser in all meanings of the word. At times the set list choices seem arbitrary and then you take a step back and it seems quite the opposite, like everything has been deliberately planned, the songs, the lyrics touching you in all the right spots, the improvisational arcs taking you exactly where you want to go. This was my least favorite of the three nights so far, but featured some of my favorite moments of the run so far, so I think it’s all exactly where it’s supposed to be. Of course, the experience is my own, but it’s in the sharing it with literally hundreds of friends, old and new, that’s where the good stuff is. Midway through the show, I found out that the work trip I was to have left for today, the one that would have me miss the last two nights, was canceled. It’s looking more likely that I’ll hit the last two, looking more likely that it was meant to be that way, and so, I can only imagine what surprises and untold secrets remain. See you there.
Sunday, 1Mar20
I mentioned how Saturday’s show featured a couple lulls. The next night’s show had, by far, the largest number of quiet and slow moments of the entire run, but, perhaps paradoxically, had no lulls whatsoever, from where I was sitting. In fact, it was those quiet moments that created the most intensity and the foundation for some of the best improv of the night. The show started with JB more or less solo singing “From the Cradle.” It was a theme of the night, John Bell under a cascade of spotlights, the rest of the band laying back or laying low, that sweet gravel voice filling the theater on its own and then, the whole ensemble filling in the quiet around his voice, spurts of water through cracks in a dam, until eventually overtaking the quiet, inverting the silence and churning a flood of pure Widespread Panic into the Beacon. That was how it went with the opening “From the Cradle,” it was there in “Let’s Get the Show on the Road,” and “Trouble” and even in second set burn-this-muthfucker-down versions of “Diner” and “Papa’s Home.” Just by doing what he does best and the band giving him the space and by virtue of smart setlist choices, JB was the focal point over and over, his soul gave Sunday-night meaning to an otherwise merciless onslaught of Panic badassery.
What was fascinating to me about that was how Jimmy Herring responded to the style of show, how his playing thrived in such a setting. Damn, Jimmy was straight fire Sunday night. Whenever there was an opportunity to play one fuck-you-up solo, he managed to play three completely different ones, a child getting off a roller coaster, dizzy with delight, screaming let’s do it again, and not giving anyone a second’s chance to say they’d had enough. Straight. Fire. “Bowlegged Woman” and, damn-that-was-better-than-expected “Little Kin” and “Diner” and “Papa’s Home,” he ruled them all, channeling different levels of playing, occasionally summoning the ghosts of the Allman Brothers past or of the Phil Lesh Quintet or of Michael Houser himself… he embodied it all in his Jimmy Herring holyshit kind of way. I think the last two nights of this run may have featured some of the best, most confident, most constrained-in-a-good-way Jimmy Herring I’ve heard in a long while. The “Diner” was exemplary on this front, three separate monster solos, a veritable triathlon of crusher guitar, each as different as biking, running and swimming, each laying the Beacon to waste like few have. That was a very, very good Diner.
Still, the highlight of the night might have been the drop from Diner (which was, it must be said, preceded by a Panic danceparty “Disco” for the ages), into “No Sugar Tonight.” Still a rarity, I think, the crowd popped like fucking popcorn for that one, as high energy off-the-wall sing-along-at-the-top-of-your-lungs as they’d been all extended-weekend. The trend from Thursday to Sunday, the energy of the band, the sound in the theater, the increasing cohesiveness of the lights, and, perhaps most importantly, the lid-flipping energy of the crowd all seemed to be on an exponentially up trajectory and I feel like when they hit the first chorus of ‘No Sugar Tonight” some sort of barrier was breached, this was, to me, as good as Widespread Panic has played in the city of New York, the best the crowd had responded to such high level of play in this town, at that moment, we were all, collectively, in uncharted territory. The explosion of bass and drums in the Protein Drink/Sewing Machine combo was a spine-rattling vibration, a musical confirmation of the cracks in the Panic ceiling that had punched through into the next level above.
Was Panic adding NYC to their shortlist of homes-away-from-home? Perhaps to punctuate it, the band reminded the crowd that they’ve had a slow-roll running homage to the city going on, encoring with only the second version of Lou Reed’s “Vicious,” last played when a very different version of the band played MSG (I still have trouble believing this actually happened) on Halloween, a night when they paid tribute to the New York they obviously feel most connected to, a CBGB’s New York of brash fuck-you energy that fits their go-it-alone and go-loudly ethos as well as any. One of these shows was going to end with “Ain’t Life Grand,” it may as well have been this one, yet another perfect Panic song. One more to go…
Monday, 2Mar20
Like that dude in Clerks: I’m not even supposed to be here today! No, I wasn’t even supposed to be at all these shows, I figured one or two tops and then had a work trip that was supposed to take me out of town for the Sunday & Monday shows to make the decision easy. But the universe has a funny way of conspiring and my trip got canceled, alas, and so I did get to that dontmissa Sunday show (wouldn’t it have been a shame to miss it!?) and did, indeed, find myself quite exhausted but ready to freakin’ rock at the final night, the rare Monday night gig, and the rarest of all, 5th night in row. I was supposed to be there, I had to be, it was the way it had to be and it was.
The running NYC/CBGB-tribute that had snuck its way into the previous 4 nights in various ways and ended the Sunday night show with “Vicious” continued in the opener for the Monday night show with “I Wanna Be Sedated.” a perfectly appropriate way to kick off a show that was halfway between ugh, 5 nights is exhausting and 5th night! let’s let it alllll hang out. Only the beginning, mind you. The ensuing two sets of music were Widespread Panic perfect, all the things you love about this band (or perhaps find perplexing or utterly off-putting about the band (look, I get it, they’re not for everyone (which is part of the reason why those that get it love it so damn much))), it was all there in droves: the songwriting with its unique point of view and imagery and poetic turn-of-phrase, the pure surprising dance-your-ass-off funk of their southern rock, the exploratory where-we-going jams, the trapeze-artist segues, the obscure covers, the fist-pump originals, all of it was there Monday night.
“Travelin’ Light” was a gimme lock to be played last night and getting it off the board early cleared a later setlist spot, no doubt. “Old Neighborhood” felt appropriate for the 5th night in the same spot. I’ve never spent so much time in the Upper West Side, but have now come to appreciate its ample parking, it’s bar scene and the availability of surprisingly — great late night pepperoni pies. Who knows when I’ll be back, but for 5 nights, at least, UWS was the old neighborhood and it treated us — the band, the freaks community, the visiting Panic weirdos and all — very, very well. What I can only hope is that 10 years from now we can look back and really think of the area around the Beacon as the old neighborhood, because it’s the spot we come back to year after year after year to see Panic do their worst to that little part of Manhattan. We’ll call it Freakin’ at the Beacon and won’t that be a thing? So, yeah, “Old Neighborhood” was the one that got the butts shaking, a mild funk that was still in the just-warming-up part of the night. The trailing part of the first set featured not one, not two, but three songs off of the Mom’s Kitchen” release, which is to say the band went very old school. All weekend I had been feeling this sort of nostalgic muscle memory, the music making getting me buzzed off my own youth as my brain and body responded to these songs that had been a part of my life for so long. I’ve been seeing Widespread since fuck-I’m-old 1992 and these songs are flowing in my blood. The lyrics, the riffs, the rise and the fall of the songs, the emotional and physical response, the memories of the times I’ve seen them, the times each of these songs clicked for me, it’s all there in each and every moment of these shows. That Last Straw > Pleas > Rock > Jack > Love Tractor could have been played in 93 or 95 or 97 or anytime, but it was played Monday and it was glorious, part of a serious they-could-play-anything right now show. It was during this stretch that you really felt like it was the last night, like the band had worked out whatever kinks were left, that they had embraced the peculiarities of the theater and the audience, the city and the neighborhood, they were exhausted and also, strangely, maybe well-rested. Quite simply, they were operating at their peak, the sound was dialed in like it hadn’t been all week, crisp and still quite heavy, you could hear every John Bell lyric, savor every Jimmy Herring lick and yet had no trouble getting your balls tickled by Duane’s overpowering bass drum or Dave Schools dirty-laundry bass playing.. these dudes sounded goooood. And they looked good too, the lights were on point at a much higher level Monday night, everything coming together like the last chapter of a great novel. Fuck. Yeah.
If the run had ended right there with just that first set Monday night, dayeinu, dayeinu. The band had won. We had won. Whoever had a financial stake in the sell-out and the sales of liquor had, no doubt won as well. Dayeinu. I was satisfied, satiated and smiling from ear to ear. But, you know, no reason not to stick around and see what they do in that final set. Might be good, you know? What do you think? Do you think they saved the best for last? You bet your sweet bippy they did, motherfuckers. Last set was the best set, a dizzying array of great songs, great jams, extended weirdness, boogie-down dirtfunk and soul-stirring awesome. Good lord, they crushed it…
One thing that always strikes me when I see these guys, one of the things that makes them unique of many of the “bands” I’ve seen with regularity, is that all their songs are Widespread Panic songs. Maybe that sounds obvious, but the thing is, if you look at writing credits for any of their compositions, it’ll always say “Widespread Panic.” Might seem trivial, but it ain’t. Because if you see them enough you realize how their music transcends any individual, whether it be the guy who wrote the lyrics or the guy who’s using his ridiculous bass playing to guide the bridge or the dude who’s just adding in some pops of his bongo to fill in the sound. Each guy is just as important as the next and, above all, the collective is the thing. The band is a family and that home team spirit extends to anyone who walks in the door to see them play. That was pure joy and love you felt when you were inside that theater this week and it was real. So, when they open the set with “The Waker,” there is something very profound and beautiful about John Bell singing a song that Michael Houser wrote for his son, in the fact that even though it was as personal as it gets, that that song is not a “Michael Houser song,” but is and will always be a “Widespread Panic song.” Such a lovely, lovely thing.
My call for the show opener was Pigeons > Hatfield, and I couldn’t have been happier to get it only partially right. Of my top 4 or 5 Panic songs, “Pigeons” was the one they saved for the last stanza and damn, was it a glorious one. Herring’s unpredictability can occasionally open wondrous doors for the band’s jamming and that felt like a theme for the second set, the band’s general on-the-same-page-ness providing just the right amount of push-pull with the guitar ramblings to generate some WSP gold. Pigeons went places both familiar and unique, carrying itself from section to section with such confident brilliance. It’s groovy! Now it’s thoughtful, now rocking, now soul-ignition soaring, now psychedelic jam-spiraling… my word, I love that damn song. Great, great version. Hatfield is a different beast, altogether, a folk tale and a folk-rocker all in one, but it had no less of a voyage as the Pigeons. That’s sort of when you felt it, felt how this was going to be one of those kinds of sets, Clark Kent had exited the phone booth in a blue-and-red body suit and, holy shit, it’s-a-bird-it’s-a-plane, he can fucking fly! The extended JB rambling/rap in Hatfield was both an always-welcome diversion and also the last real breather of the week. From there it was into the heart of the sun we went. My Panic muscle memory kicked in as Duane pounded his drums out of the Hatfield jam, I saw that “Impossible” coming from a mile away, earning myself a double-fist-pump. The Impossible > Saint Ex > Tie Your Shoes was dirty and funky and absolutely everything, the weekend punching its way out of its boundaries and gobbling up Sunday and Monday like some ravenous beast. That three song stretch was a band saying, in as polite terms as possible, do not fuck with us. The Impossible opened into a cool “The Other One” chug rattled largely by Duane on the drums, but joined somewhat gleefully by the rest. The jam out of the groovalicious “Tie Your Shoes” was as good as it gets, 6 guys in perfect resonance, each one drawing 5 lines to each of the others, the dynamic design of these metaphoric threads creating some sort of intergalactic dream catcher. No one jams like that, no one ever will. That’s pure Panic. How lucky we are. If the Nobody’s Loss felt a little out of place that deep into a set of what I can only call perfect, so be it, that’s part of Widespread Panic as well and the closing North was as predictable as the second-song Travelin’ Light, but no less blood-pumping.
With the entire NYC theme going all run, I was quite confident calling, in post-show conversation Sunday night, that there would be a few Talking Heads songs, perhaps a Heaven > Life During Wartime. City of Dreams was the more obvious pick, but Life During Wartime, the third song that was debuted at that MSG Halloween show, was a mortal lock to end the night and, to the surprise of no one, had the audience doing a collective somersault in let-it-all-hang-out glee. Did you know that the Talking Heads’ debut gig at CBGB’s was an opening slot for the Ramones? Did the band? Don’t really matter, but a nice little bow on this show taking place, relatively speaking, no where near CBGB’s. But unlike that vaunted club, the Beacon still stands as a beacon for kick-ass rock and roll and, more importantly, Widespread Panic still stands triumphant, perhaps now claiming NYC as its own, I know we’re all game to be claimed. Here’s to many years of Freakin’ at the Beacon with WSP.
For the record, I’d go Monday, Sunday, Friday, Thursday, Saturday. What a blast!
