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I can’t say that I remember a whole lot from the JGB/nero show at Babylon on April 24th, 2001, but I certainly recall having…ahem…”mixed feelings” about it.
I was a-okay with the show itself. I mean, what Ottawa neo-hippie wasn’t happy for the opportunity to see long-time Jerry Garcia Band keyboardist Melvin Seals lead his smokin’ band through a long set of groovy extendo-jam covers of songs like Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, The Maker, and Stop That Train in the city’s latest coolest live music bar? And even though this was very early in nero’s career, their weekly residency at Babylon had the crowd excited both in them and for them, and we all packed the floor in the horshoe-shaped venue and ate up their opening set like they were a box of chocolate mushrooms.
And Melvin’s set was pretty darn great. I remember boogie-ing up a storm in the middle of the dancefloor surrounded by a dozen good friends, all of us taking random turns ecstatically buying beers and shooters for one another. Heck, Melvin Seals was a big part of my inaugural jammy experience, when a vanload of us trucked on down to Albany to see Jerry Garcia in the fall of ’91. Due to extreme border hassles we didn’t get to the show until just before setbreak. When the second set started with a cover of Eric Clapton’s Lay Down Sally Jerry’s amp was acting up and the keyboard player launched into a solo while roadies went to work trying to get Jerry’s gear working. As a result, my first live jamband song was basically Melvin Seals soloing for fifteen straight minutes while my mind melted into the shape it has been ever since.
So, you know…respect. But…
This show at Babylon wasn’t billed as “Melvin Seals” or even “Melvin Seals from JGB”*, it was billed simply as “JGB”. To be specific, the poster featured “JGB” at the top in the largest font imaginable, beneath which was the tagline (I guess): “Keepin the Jerry Vibe Alive”, and all of it superimposed over a big picture of Jerry Garcia’s face. Lower on the poster it read (in even smaller font): “featuring melvin seals and NERO”**.
And this bugs me.
(For the eye rollers out there, rest assured: it bugs me that this bugs me as much as it bugs you that it bugs me. Possibly even more.)
At this point Jerry had been dead for less than six years; did Melvin and his management team really think that such a disrepectful co-opting of Jerry’s name (okay, Jerry’s initials) was worth the few extra tickets they might sell? If so: damn. It was exactly this thought pattern that I struggled to ignore as the good times swirled on and on around me. I don’t even remember if it bugged me more or less when it sank in that the show wasn’t leaning very hard on standard Jerry Band material, or that the band had forged a sound of their own that wasn’t actually very JGB-ish (though like I say, they were smokin’).
Probably more. I’m like that all the time sometimes.
In summation: great show; poor presentation. Extra points for having a quality opening act. Overall: B
*Okay, the ticket stub billed the show as “J. G. B. with Melvin Seals” but the poster didn’t.
**Rather ironic that whoever made the poster went out of their way to spell Seal’s name without any capital letters while putting nero’s name in all caps. I don’t know about Melvin, but nero fought their entire career to always be spelled in all lower-case letters.
Todd Man Out 