From: Charlie Dirksen
04/14/94 Beacon Theater, New York City, NY Opening standard. The pre-Nirvana,
vibration of life build is spacey,
harmonically joyous. Nothing unduly pleasing, though. Nirvana at 3:16,
and Trey kinda fumbles the opening (booooo!). Page's
playing is glorious as usual. Mike's solo section is off-key and coily..
awry-sounding and mysterious. Nice! The first Note is
somewhat hit by Trey.. he really just jams around it. Charge at 6:17.
"Boy" at 6:34. Trey uses a horse-like voice on Boy, Man,
and God.. whinnying, sortof. =^] WUDMTF segment is otherwise standard.
At the beginning of the tramps segment, Trey talks
to the audience about how he obviously can't jump on the tramps, and
asks for audience members to volunteer to do it for him.
Page grooves out. Mike's signals are funky. "Nice attempt, nice attempt,
maybe next time. Let's give him a big hand."
hahahaha.. oh well. Mike and Trey groove really well, playing off each
other around 11 minutes or so. Very melodious at first,
but then it fizzles out.. Fish drops out briefly. BUT THEN they all
come in at the same time, and enter into a stop/start sortof
style, stopping completely after each bar. For a few bars.. and then
by 12:20 they kick into a typical YEM jam segment again.
The jamming in here is great, but certainly not above average with
respect to intensity. Not nearly as SICK as it could be,
although the last 30 seconds or so before B&D is very fine. Bass
and drums at 14:02 (with some chords from Page at first).
Mike jams well in here, and Fish's accompaniment is great, but nothing
truly amazing occurs. Final WUDMTF segment at 15:17
or so. Serious cut in my copy of this vocal jam (my copy is from an
analog master). I won't bother to review it. Total time is
somewhere around 20 minutes I imagine, but I don't know, since this
vocal jam seems to be viciously cut. I wasn't too thrilled
by this YEM. I think it is easily, without question, immeasurably below
average for post-93 YEMs. C rating. two cents