scooter's spot v. 2.0

(REVIEW!!) Perpetual Groove - Amberland Day 1 - Deerfields, NC - 5/27/06

Welcome to Amberland! (Thanks, Chris High for this truly excellent photo!)

We pulled our cars into Deerfields, a beautiful piece of property with rolling hills, a babbling brook, multiple lakes, acres of hiking trails, hills, mountains and all the glorious flourishes of nature that one usually doesn't see when living in a concrete jungle of suburban sprawl as I do. Honestly, I felt like I was back at summer camp. The fact that the summer camp I attended for years as a kid was literally the next town over from Deerfields.

I wonder what the property is used for when not being used for festivals. There were two cabins on site, and the owners (I believe) live there year round.

Back to the weekend. We drove in a parked our cars, picking a nice shady spot (shady is in under the cover of shade-producing trees, not shady as in tour trash sketchballs, thank you very much....) to pitch our tents. We needed a lot of space, because the tent that we used was, quite literally, the biggest tent I have ever slept in. It was actually bigger than my bedroom in my apartment. We slept five in it (with air mattresses for all) quite comfortably.

Mitch whipped up some Bloody Marys (with horseradish, of course!) and pre-gaming continued. We headed over to the stage around 3 to relax in the sunshine and get ready for some music.

Ahh, the music. It was wonderful!

Perpetual Groove – 5/27/06 - Amberland day 1 – Deerfields, NC
(Thanks to Matt Dolian, who posted this bittorrent, from which I borrowed the setlist)

Set I: For Now Forget, Perihelion, Tupelo Honey, Luthien & Beren, Long Past Settled In, 53 More Things to do in Zero Gravity > Naive Melody, TSMM

Albert bangin' out the beat! (Thanks, Brad K for this truly excellent photo!)

This set was a nice little way to get the weekend started (musically, at least. I had started partying with the first beer waiting in line a few hours earlier. Van Morrison’s “Tupelo Honey” was a cover I had never heard before, so that was a bonus, while “Long Past Settled In" featured guitarist Brock Butler shredding the lapsteel, creating the instrument’s trademark warbling tone. And then the gorgeous instrumental (as well as the first of many references this weekend to author Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”) “53 More Things to Do in Zero Gravity” led perfectly into my personal favorite Perpetual Groove Cover, the Talking Heads’ “Naïve Melody”. “TSMM” closed things out, and our crew headed back to the campsite, ready to post-party the first while prepping for the rest of what turned out to be an extremely long evening.

During the break we managed to find some ice, the most important (debatable, I know) substance one can have at a music festival. We also hit the bottle pretty hard, and stumbled down to the small concert field around seven o’clock; it was time to rock.

Set II: Sundog > Breeze > Pepper > Breeze, Old Friend, March of Gibbles Army, TTFPJ* > Bittersweet Symphony*

* with Will Bradford from SeepeopleS

And they came out rockin’! “Sundog” climaxed in its’ usual high speed honky tonk glory, which led the way into one of my favorite pGroove sequences (my actual favorite was played later this weekend).

To me, the song “Breeze” sounds almost exactly like Phish’s “Camel Walk”. Maybe not the whole thing, but parts of it are like an echo. I got no problem with that, mind you, especially when the nasty electronic jam drops into the Butthole Surfers’ “Pepper”. It made me all warm and fuzzy to hear the entire crowd singing along at the top of their lungs:

“I don't mind the sun sometimes, the images it shows…I can taste you on my lips, and smell you in my clothes…Cinnamon and sugary and softly spoken lies…you never know just how you look through other people's eyes…”

New tune “Old Friend” and old school classic “March of Gibbles Army” followed before we got to the nasty stuff. “TTFPJ” featured the return of the evening’s first special guest, Will Bradford from SeepeopleS, and was nice and funky before dropping into one of the two (make that three, on second thought) covers I wanted to hear over the course of the weekend: the Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony”. Now I never really liked Richard Ashcroft’s band when they were actually popular, but I gained an appreciation for the song watching him front Coldplay and play it at Live8 last summer. Let me tell you that Perpetual Groove crushes this song, creshendo-ing its’ classical climax as hard as a four-piece rock outfit can. This version was no exception, and proved to be a sweet closer for set number 2.

Now is the point were setbreak activities get a bit fuzzy. All I can tell you is that we were still sitting in our camp chairs when we heard the opening notes of the next set a while later.

Set III: Helter Skelter# > Speed Queen#, Gone Round the Twist > Stealy Man, Legends of Preston > All This Everything, Part II > Three Weeks > Legends of Preston, Lunatix the Guide > Diggin' in the Dirt

# with Damien Perry

That Sexy Matt McDonald! (Thanks, Chris High for this truly excellent photo!)

Hot damn, that’s a lot of arrows! (Indicating a segue, the seamless transition between two songs for the uninitiated.) The band was tight, I heard some favorites )”Three Weeks”, “Stealy Man”), some tunes I’ve never heard live before (“Helter Skelter”, “legends of Preston”, “Gone Round the Twist", a rarely played tune, a seizure-inducing (helped in no small part by Huffer the Light Guy’s rental rig and aluminum-foil looking Mylar backdrop) version of “Speed Queen” and what can possibly be the best version of Peter Gabriel’s “Diggin’ in the Dirt” that I have ever heard.

What is scary is that this set paled in comparison to what came next.

I honestly enjoyed the fourth set more than any other music I heard the entire weekend. I’ve been telling people that the set reminded me of some of the better (and more outrageous and experimental) Phish shows I’ve seen. I was told that it was a bold statement I was making, but I stand by it. The set was awesome.

Set IV: MOTA # > Stranglehold # > Jam > I'm Afraid of Americans * > Stranglehold * > Mota > Rhymin' and Stealin' #

* with Will Bradford from SeepeopleS

# with Damien Perry

Travis Cline from Captain Soularcat rotated in during the set

Bassist Adam Perry earing his keep bangin; the keys!

(Thanks, Brad K for this truly excellent photo!)

The psychedelic spaciness of “MOTA” served as a launching pad for a monster set. Once the opening guitar rift of Ted Nugent’s “Stranglehold” kicked in (you may not know the song, but if you like rock and/or roll, you definitely know the rift), it was on. Heavy metal mode set on overdrive, a jam that sounded (and still does as the track plays on my computer) like it could become Bob Marley’s “Exodus” without too much effort and then suddenly some calm arrives. The fourteen-plus minute jam that followed zoomed out there (out where?) before being reined in with some DJ-esque samples, and becoming David Bowie’s “I’m Afraid of Americans”. Another one of my favorite covers, and it became the pivot-point in a musical trick I love.

I’ve only ever seen the Disco Biscuits pull a musical palindrome, and I’ve only seen them do it once. But if, like me, you do not count “Jam” as a song, and you have the creativity to consider “Rhymin’ and Stealin’”—the last song played at four set show—the encore, then pGroove played a palindrome.

The electro/jam goodness of Bowie’s ode to American culture slid into the tail end of “Stranglehold”, with Brock screaming the lyrics out in a broken tone, before finishing up the almost hour-and-twenty-five minute, uninterrupted chunk of music with a reprise of MOTA.

The Beastie Boys’ “Rhymin’ and Stealin’” was a bonus for me; hell, I could have got in the car and left right then and there and been, musically at least, completely satisfied.

In a little more than twelve hours, Perpetual Groove played four ridiculous sets of music. I was a happy camper, our crew was glowing and there was beer to drink.

Tomorrow was to be another day…

Go, Huffer, Go! Thanks, Brad K for this truly excellent photo!

posted by Unknown @ 7:05 PM