The Big Happy

FROM THE TOURING DESK: The Big Happy Seven Feathers Casino
Canyonville, Oregon

Random scenes from the morning after a night of fitful sleep in the back of a rented minivan barreling northwards from Santa Cruz: any of a dozen cheap motels that we stopped at after last night's show trying to find a room,; hearing tourmates discuss the outcome of the situation in muffled words and half-thoughts piercing the thin haze of non-sleep; waking groggily somewhere in wine country, vineyards on either side of the car, a thick fog smothering everything but the painted yellow divider...

Lying in bed after the show at the Great American the other night, it struck me that I could probably continue to be awake for a long time to come and not really notice any major side-effects. Sleep has been erratic for a while, caught here and there. Everything else has taken on the quality of a waking dream -- too surreal and terrific to be otherwise. In and out of consciousness, sleeping on my feet and awake with my eyes closed in the back seat, my bones creak and my eyelids crust over.

In the Cincinnati airport, I randomly ran into a friend of a friend, also heading towards San Francisco to see the Biscuits. Her boyfriend picked her up at the airport and gave me a lift over to the Great American -- the ornate San Francisco ballroom where the Grateful Dead's "One From The Vault" was recorded and the host of a three-night moe. New Year's run in 1997 that I attended along with my friend Carol.

Our flight had arrived at 10:30, well after the Biscuits had started. We pulled through the Tenderloin at a little after 11, somewhere near the end of the setbreak. People milled outside talking and smoking cigarettes -- there's a ban on smoking in bars and clubs in California. Heads stumbled about looking for tickets and other ways inside. Thankfully, my friends had seen to it that there'd be a ticket waiting for me at will call. Praise 'em.

I made it inside to catch the verse vocals to the second set opener, Little Lai. The jam, loud and aggressive, thundered into a new Marc Brownstein song - entitled Floodlights -- part of the "Chemical Warfare Brigade" rock opera. The Disco Biscuits are maybe one of the only bands out there with the audacity to pull such a thing off with a mostly straight face. In an age where one of the most grievous sins known to the artistic world is take one's self seriously, the Disco Biscuits are unabashed sinners. Where most bands seem to move with air of self-effacing humility, there are times where the Biscuits come off as pompous blow-hards. If they weren't so damn good, I might find them hilarious.

A melodious prelude led into the first rendition of Once The Fiddler Paid since Brownstein rejoined the band followed. The band inserted a short jam in the middle (where there usually isn't), which was quietly elegant, though perhaps wound on too long for its own good. Still, it was interesting to hear. Basis For A Day was interesting, though not coherent in the bigger picture. The first jam - a calypso-infused dance romp - was colored by an almost tropical melody from Aron Magner (claimed to be a Billy Joel tune by a friend) which somehow wound its way back into Basis. The second jam stuttered into a slow motion dance groove, like a person being sucked gradually into a black hole and attempting to escape. Eventually, escape happened. The build to the ending, while still succeeding in climaxing the tune, was almost a paint-by-numbers version of what it normally is.

The next day found us wandering aimlessly around the Bay Area - eating breakfast at the Pork Store in the Haight and eventually floating over to Berkeley, where we spent a good long while trying to find a parking spot. By the time we did, we realized that we should probably get on the road down to Santa Cruz.

***
Last night's Disco Biscuits show at Palookaville in Santa Cruz was a good ol' fashioned headfucking. Obviously, that can't really suffice for a review. For one, it's too hyperbolic. For another, it doesn't really say anything about the show in a manner that successfully transfers what happened emotionally in a way that can be universally comprehended. All that said, it really was a good ol' fashioned headfucking.

Generally speaking, I find it much harder to write about the Disco Biscuits than I do to, say, about Phish. I'm not entirely sure why this is, though I have my suspicions. I think it comes down to a difference in the music. Phish jams are, by their very nature, quite linear and progress from one section to another in a very prose-like way, so that one can pick out pretty much each instrument like a character and trace it on through. Biscuits' jams tend to be more of a ball of energy.

If four people sing a perfect harmony, it should fool the human ear into thinking that it is only listening to one voice. In a way, the Biscuits' construct their jams like this. Even if it's not always entirely successful, it seems like the goal of the band is for the four musical voices to meld into one unbreakable hole. This puts a sheen over the entire sound that makes it hard to track the music in a traditional way. The music changes almost imperceptibly. Because - for me, anyway - it takes a conscious effort to latch on to any one part, a jam tends to change somewhere under the range of perception.

I find it hard to connect to things in Biscuits' jams other than general moods and vibes. I rarely find myself remembering specific parts unless I write them down as they're happening. That said, the Palookaville show opened with an extremely bright tandem of Plan B with a half-hearted segue into Magellan reprise (the first in over a year). The sweet melodies continued through the introduction of the normally evil Voices Insane -- connecting it musically to the sterile arrangement performed with DJ Mauricio during Marc's hiatus. With Marc, though, it worked. As the verse began, the band descended into darkness and stayed rooted there for the rest of the set.

The second set began with what was essentially a warm-up number: Brownstein's new Confrontation (also from "the Chemical Warfare Brigade"). The rest of the set was a dub-filled extravaganza. One of my favorite Biscuits' jam from 1999 is the encore from the December 4th show at Irving Plaza: a long and winding Jigsaw Earth. When the band came back without Marc in March, it seemed like that direction was being tossed by the wayside. The second set last night completely resurrected that in the form of an extended sequence of Jigsaw Earth > Svenghali, Mindless Dribble > Jigsaw Earth > inverted Above The Waves > Mindless Dribble > Jigsaw Earth.

The first Dribble featured a hugely triumphant major jam almost in the spirit (though not specifics) of the Dead's Mind Left Body Jam, which I've been told contains the basic workings for a new song entitled the Big Happy. Either way - if it's a song or a jam - it was spectacular. As the jam/song wound to a logical close, Barber (and I wrote this down at the time) led a quick spin from the graceful ending into an accelerated dub jam that was clearly back in Jigsaw territory.

 The jam continued to peak. I absorbed it as one would a rush of blinding white light. Suddenly, the band was crashing into the ending of Above The Waves. I just didn't see it coming. At all. After the ending, the band twisted back into the song's intro, making the song into an inverted version. At Camp Bisco last year, the inverted version - in my opinion, anyway - fell short in a very anti-climactic way, the arrangement somehow being too top heavy. Last night, it worked because the ending came after such an excessively huge build from Dribble and Jigsaw.

Like I said: a good ol' fashioned headfucking.

After the show, we fled Santa Cruz in a daze. We gave up our unsuccessful search for a motel somewhere just after dawn, an hour or so north of San Francisco, deep into wine country. We traded off driving 'til dinner time, when we somehow ended up in the Seven Feathers Casino, about three hours south of Portland. We will now run amuck.

Jesse Jarnow can be reached at jesse.jarnow@oberlin.edu or by his homepage. Previous tour journals are located here.