WIDESPREAD PANIC AT H.O.B.
By Timothy C. Davis
For Weekly Surge
Jazz critic Ben Watson wrote in the spring 2001 issue of Signal to Noise that: "Free Improvisation is almost by definition outsider music, opposed to capitalist business as usual; Free Improvisation doesn't guarantee any particular sound or mood, it produces a question mark rather than a commodity."
Tell that to the Widespread Panic fans who assembled at House of Blues on Monday evening for the first of a three-day residency by their heroes. Dudes were quaffing down $5 beers - Newcastles and Sierra Nevadas being the predominate favorites, according to my informal visual research - quicker than you can say "Croakies and khakis, brah." One guy near me was Blackberrying (is that a word?) every new song the band played to what he told me was a Widespread Panic message board. (His friend, when I mentioned I hail originally from Union County, N.C., laughed his ass off. "What's so funny?" I asked. "It's called 'Union County,'" he said, "And it's in the South?" I explained to him that the word "union" can mean many things, as can the word "rebel," and his eyes glazed over even more than they already had been.)
So no: it's not mid-60s Coltrane, or even The Who in some of the band's free-er incarnations. Then again, Widespread Panic has always been a vastly different animal than other so-called ``jam'' acts Phish or the Grateful Dead, WSP's improvisation celebrating excess more than discovery more often than not.
To these ears, there's three distinct styles of jamming. There's your jazz-based jamming, wherein a band completely throws away the rule book and goes shit-for-broke, completely allowing The Moment to dictate what comes next and how long it goes on for. Sometimes it sounds like so much shit; and sometimes it sounds like God came down off his perch, slid down a rainbow, hopped into your head and proceeded to implode himself into a million prism-like diamond shards (see the Grateful Dead). Then you have the vast majority of jam bands, who segue into and out of set jams and free-improv moments as the spirit (or spirits) move them. moe. is among the better outfits at this sort of thing, and as such, is perfect for both the pilsner and pharmaceutical crowds. Finally, there's your chord progression-based jamming, which is basically variations on pre-written music, allowing for tempo changes and extended solos (see the Panic boys). It's not the most evolved thing in the world, but there's much less chance of utter awfulness. Then again, Panic is a band which has evolved quite a lot in its own way, morphing from a glorified bar band playing 20-minute complete sets to one that sometimes plays 20-minute songs.
The band began the first set with a huge crowd favorite, "Last Straw," which a little bearded guy informed me was "super rare," and that he'd not heard it open a show, and he'd seen the band "like 150 times." Then the band segued into "Tall Boy," which put the idea in my head that perhaps I'd dig this show more with a cold beer, which I soon bought from the men's room (Seriously! Out with the old, in with the new, one supposes.) By this time, the fellers launched into a mini-medley of "No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature" by The Guess Who and "Fixin' To Die" by bluesman Bukka White, whose last name almost completely described the crowd, incidentally. From there, it was on to "Makes Sense to Me, Coach" - a song, incidentally, that had the formerly twirling crowd mumbling amongst itself, wondering what the hell the track was, before deciding the hell with it and returning to the concentric circle dancing. Two more songs, "A of D" and "Coconut," seemed to spin their wheels before a rock-solid "Solid Rock" closed the first set.
After an interminable set break of at least 30 minutes - the band is said to pen the second set's setlist right before going back on stage - Panic returned to the disco. Highlights of the second set included "Her Dance Needs No Body," which indeed "raged gently," as the lyrics put it, a biting cover of Neil Young's appropriately dark "Vampire Blues," and a nice "Pigeons," always a fan favorite with its reefer innuendos ("Wake up, come down/grass hasn't grown too high...Well, ease your body down/The grass all around us is just green and fine.") and general goodtime vibe.
By encore time ("Already Fried," indeed), some of the audience had moved on, whether to the afterparty show next door with longtime Panic acolyte Jerry Joseph and his two-man band The Denmark Veseys, or back to the hotel for a little late-night debauchery. (Do take the opportunity to see Joseph next time he comes 'round these parts - his songwriting is much more straightforward, both musically and lyrically, than Panic's, but he's not your typical restaurant-style covers jukebox, either - dude's got juicy chops.)
Indeed, word the next day on Panic message boards was that the show was merely "meh" - "uplifting," as one guy put it, but not "transcendant." I hear you, brother, but methinks if there's a Higher Plane to be reached, you're not likely to find it, in this world or any other, where Croakies and deck shoes are present.