Grousing The Aisles: Playing Catch Up

My favorite part of the RAQ show came towards the end of the 90-minute-plus first set when they dropped Otis Spode. Otis Spode is one of RAQ’s newest tunes, and it could be the best composition they’ve written in years. You gotta love a song that sounds like it was written by Nikki Sixx and Frank Zappa with a hint of Rush thrown in. Other highlights included a fun cover of Van Halen’s Jump, the jam out of Helter Skelter and the Will Run closer that contained elements of the Dead’s Scarlet > Fire transition.

It’s been a few weeks since this gig, and some of the songs RAQ played are still stuck in my head. The choruses of Silhouette and Gabvonie continue to play on repeat in my mind. These guys sure to know how to write catchy tunes, even the instrumentals like Carbs stick with you after the show. RAQ brings the Donkey Show to Texas this weekend, where they will play two gigs at Austin’s Club 115.

Ween 11/30/2007 DAUD [FLAC, MP3]

Photo by sminp

Life has been tough for New York City Ween fans, who haven’t been able to see their band play a normal gig in the city since the Quebec Tour in 2003. The waiting finally came to an end this past Friday night when Ween kicked off a two-night stand at the brand spanking new Terminal 5. If this was a normal review I’d spend a few paragraphs talking about the horrible sight lines, 40-minute line to get in and all of the other aspects that make Terminal 5 a terrible place to see a concert. But this is Grousing The Aisles, so I’ll focus on Ween’s incredible performance.

No band can quickly move from genre to genre as well as Ween can. The boys showed off more faces than Jan Leighton during a rollicking two and a half hour set packed to the gills with songs from throughout their storied career. Ween opened with a mellow 1-2 punch of Exactly Where I’m At and She Wanted to Leave, before dropping the much more heavy H.I.V. Song. After that we got a taste of country with the catchy Piss Up A Rope, a little reggae during an arrangement of Reggaejunkiejew that sounded nothing like the version on Pure Guava, and a bit of punk thanks to Johnny On The Spot. You never knew what was coming next, but you knew it would be awesome.

I’ve been to about four Ween shows previous to the Terminal 5 shows, and one thing that stood out this weekend was how good all of the members of the band have gotten. When did keyboardist Glenn McClelland become the next Rick Wright? Some of the licks and solos he laid down were among the best I’ve seen all year. I always knew Claude Coleman Jr. was one of the most underrated players in the game, but I had never thought too much about McClelland. And of course we can’t forget to mention Dean Ween’s ridiculous skills on the guitar. Consider it mentioned.

If you are looking for one particular segment to check out from this show, be sure to download the encore. Ween thrilled the crowd with a four-song encore that was just as varied as the more than two-hour main set. They started out with the bluesy Strap On That Jammypac before dropping Fiesta, one of only four songs from La Cucharacha that the New Hope natives played. The last two songs of the evening, Booze Me Up and Get Me High and Blarney Stone, turned into merry singalongs that made me realize the majority of the crowd had a great time regardless of the shitty venue. Hopefully Ween comes back to NYC soon, and that they return to the far less shitty Roseland. Did I actually just say I hope a band plays the Roseland? Indeed I did, Terminal 5 is that bad.

Here are five other must-download shows that surfaced this week: