salem show review

(setlist from RAA.com)

Cold Roses
Off Broadway
Mockingbird
Beautiful Sorta
The Rescue Blues
The Sun Also Sets
Everybody Knows
Wonderwall
Oh My Sweet Carolina
When The Stars Go Blue
Oh My God Whatever Etc.
Goodnight Rose>
Bartering Lines>
Jam
I See Monsters

--Set Break--

Elizabeth
Goodnight Hollywood Boulevard
Magnolia Mountain
Pearls On A String (acapella)
A Kiss Before I Go
Easy Plateau

okay, so i'm going to do my usual song-by-song thing, but before i do that, i should note that this was my first cardinals show since May of 2005 (before i even had a copy of cold roses and thusly only knew 2 of the songs played that entire night), and my first time seeing ryan at all since his solo show at the Moore in April of 2006 (which was a good show but marred a bit by the fact that he was heavily under the influence of something at the time and had to be reminded of the lyrics to a few of his songs by the crowd) :) anyway, needless to say i was more than a little bit excited, and the show itself somehow managed to exceed even my expectations. the only negative point of the night was actually just my seat; i was tucked way back on ryan's side of the stage, a few rows back but over far enough that i couldn't see past the sound equipment on stage to see the piano. which was a bit of a bummer during piano songs. otherwise, things were great, except maybe a little weirdness with the house mix early, which was fixed by audience democracy ("GIVE US MORE VOCALS!!!").

i can't say much about the cold roses/off broadway/mockingbird opening other than it was just filthy and had me considering jumping into the aisle and dancing by partway through mockingbird. i don't know if this is a usual thing on this west coast tour, but what seemed to be happening a lot tonight was 1) lots more spacey/feedback-style jamming, and 2) lots of ryan improvising outside of the "usual" melody lines for the songs. and i mean LOTS of improvising. but his voice has just gotten so outrageously better than it even was before lately that this actually makes the songs better for me, not worse. anyway, before i start salivating thinking about it...

rescue blues was great, and seemed pretty much like it's sounded on the recordings from fall, though by this point in the show the guys were all having a really good time and there was a lot of hilarious guitar-fencing between spacewolf and neal. later, they'd get into trouble for encouraging kids to smoke during spacewolf (apparently nightly) public service announcement, but i'll get to that.

i've never been completely sold on "the sun also sets" until tonight, but now i'm a convert. something about seeing it live, and seeing ryan attack the mic stand instead of playing guitar was excellent. he almost missed the "be sure" part snuffing out a cigarette though, which was pretty amusing. everybody knows sort of bled into wonderwall, which started with just ryan and eventually involved the entire band. sweet carolina was electric; i don't know if that's rare or not, but i really, really liked it that way. one of the high points of the night for me. it took them awhile to get started on it, because ryan was heckling a heckler, but it worked really well as a rocked-out version (still with the harmonica).

i think "stars go blue" was pretty standard (i.e. great) but i'm not sure because there was a lot of aisle traffic during it and was playing musical chairs for most of the song :)

OMG, whatever, ETC was ryan in no-guitar mode again. it was a lot like the album version, but again i'm not complaining.

the highlight of this set for me was the rose > bartering lines > jam section (and the jam actually sort of led into i see monsters, if i remember correctly, but i might be wrong). goodnight rose ended in one of the many sort of spacey-style jams and exploded suddenly into bartering lines so perfectly that i vaguely remember (and i'm a really soft-spoken guy) throwing my fist in the air and yelling "YES!!!" or something like that. great way to close the first set (though a few people thought it was the end of the show it was such a bombastic ending and ryan had to come out and explain the set break thing).

second set seemed longer than it looks on the setlist. elizabeth had ryan on piano and goodnight hollywood blvd had him back at the mic stand without the guitar. magnolia mountain was even more extended than usual, with another distortion-heavy jam after the usual sort of zappa jazz-jam that they do. after that, ryan warned everyone that they were going into "triple meltdown mode", but then suddenly asked the guys if they wanted to do a song acapella and so everyone crowded around the mics (ryan yelled at brad to sing, brad threw his sticks at ryan, etc). it was a really great moment, all vocals except for ryan picking out a few notes on his guitar.

the easy plateau was perfect as a show closer (but that's not news, i suppose). there was the usual guitar jam at the end, then a feedback jam, then another guitar jam, and then a really wild detuned-guitar/feedback jam that went on for probably at least 3-4 minutes if not longer before they finally ended it. talk about going out on a high note.

overall, i was just really impressed with how solid these guys are as a band, and how they are visibly having fun up there playing. it's so great to see a band enjoying themselves, and it makes the show 100 times better to watch. i could really tell on a lot of the songs by just watching them play how effortless (or at least spontaneous) a lot of the improvisation and jamming was, and it's clear that they're so comfortable with a lot of these songs which they played so much last year that they seem capable of going pretty much wherever they want with them almost reflexively. i mean, i've always loved ryan's songs, but having never seen this particular band before, i never realized how GOOD they actually are, and it blew me away. i'm glad i'm going up to seattle tomorrow night.

the show was somewhere between 2 1/2 and 3 hours long, but there was also (i'm guessing) 20 minutes at least of banter with the audience. spacewolf telling kids to smoke and then getting chastised for it, ryan threatening to play the huge wurlitzer organ and trying to get a girl to meet him after the show to play video games (after specifying there would be no touching involved), and lots of other great moments banter-wise that i'm sure i'm forgetting.

this was a really great show, and it's already made going even deeper into adjunct instructor-debt totally worth it, and i still have another show to see :) sorry for the length of the review and my 100 percent endorsement of everything that the band did tonight (not being very constructively critical) but they were really just THAT good.

i took some pictures but they came out bad (not 'oh, they're not really that bad' bad, but like REALLY bad) so i'll have to see if anyone else came through on that front :)