Gent 02.09.1993 & Bergen 16.04.1999 reviewed

Check out Rolf Klausen's review of the Gent (Belgium) show/recording from September 1993, here. It's part of his newly inaugurated blog "My mind has left my body", which is dedicated to reviewing Grateful Dead shows/recordings. Hopefully he'll keep interspersing the occasional Motorpsycho review.

Reviewing recordings like that is a lot of fun & provides important information to collectors & people who are interested in the evolution of the live-band Motorpsycho. It would be great to eventually collect all reviews (most of which have yet to be written) in one place.

Incidentily I wrote a review myself the other day for the previously mentioned recently surfaced Bergen 1999 recording:

Artist: Motorpsycho
Date: April 16, 1999 (Friday)
Venue: Garage
City: Bergen
Country: Norway

Setlist: The Witch -> Step Inside / Heartbreaker-> High time / Feel / Superstooge -> The Wheel / Psychonaut / You lied -> Black To Comm -> Not Fade Away -> Back To Source tease -> Black To Comm // S.T.G. -> Young Man Blues // K9

Line up: Bent, Snah & Geb

Time: 117:35
Source: Minidisc in long play mode > CD-R
Complete: Yes.

Highlights: Step Inside, Heartbreaker -> High Time, Superwheel, S.T.G., K9

Comment: A solid complete audience recording. The very beginning is clipped but is provided by a second source that features only the first 12 minutes of the show. Listeners will have to be warned of some serious crowd noise – at one point someone speaks directly into the mic.

Review: Despite being recorded in long-play mode (mono) on Minidisc the recently surfaced recording from Bergen’s Garage sounds just good enough to be pretty enjoyable. It has a very up-front & direct charakter. Inevitably the unruly & rowdy Bergen crowd get’s their fair share of mic-time just as annoying as on other recordings from Bergen. The performance is mindblowing though!

During the first round of dirt-rockers (“The Witch”, “Step inside”, “Heartbreaker” “High-time”) the band grooves like fuck – it reminded me of how good songs “Heartbreaker” & “High time” actually are. The crowd allows the band to sweetly sing through “Feel” before we take off for the first major jam of the night: “Superwheel”. After six and a half minutes “Superstooge” enters the slowed down transition jam. Pretty soon the band develops a new theme to the jam driven by a bass-groove which they take to a Snah-lead climax four minutes afterwards, followed neatly by the opening notes of “The wheel”. Bent loses no time singing the vocals. It is here that someone speaks very annoyingly into the mic. After that the crowd overtalks the quiet first part of “The wheel”. Fortunately they are being drowned out on our recording when the band raises the volume again with a wonderful build up on rhodes before the mighty “Wheel”-riff is introduced into the jam, which also features some sequenzers or theremin-sounds as well as some great distorted keys (Snah?). They bring the jam home in classic “Superwheel”-fashion and the quiet outro, here with a spooky “S.T.G.”-like flavour, brings out the worst side of the Bergen crowd (those must be some morons there!). “Psychonaut” flies away on a deep lower-register solo & some monster Bent-takes-Hawkwind-to-the-next-level tractor grooves. “You lied>Black to comm” rocks with some funky interplay, heavy riffs & competently closes the main set.

Every fan will love the encore choices, particularly the second. A short but great “S.T.G.” (some remarkably different details in there) leads to a fun “Young man blues” before we are treated to a 23 min “K9” as second encore. And just as a couple of months ago at the very same venue (10.10.1998), when they played the first known version of an all-hell-breaks-loose noisy “K9” jam, we get that noisy type of beginning to the jam again tonight. As opposed to the jam back then they soon take it down though to enter more classic (i.e. “RW1”-like) spheres, first with a spacey fabric of keys sequenzers & delays before confidently devoting almost eight minutes to a mind-bending version of the “The faster we go, the rounder we get”-jam. [By the way, some of my favourite “K9”s stem from Bergen. The following shows in Bergen (22.10. & 23.10.1999) should spawn one of the krautiest & most exciting versions in my collection.]

A great show hampered by some nasty crowd noise but ultimately the space wins on this recording & manages to thoroughly captivate the listener.