Mystery bag...

sorry for shitty cell phone pic, left the camera at home.

So tonight I caught Medeski, Martin & Wood for the first time in almost two years and I gotta say it seems as if they have lost a little something. Don't get me wrong, it was a great show and they aren't the type of band to really play to the crowd, they play much more to what ever they're feeling which is what I love about them but it also leads to hit or miss shows. The first set started with some really experimental jazzy jams that were fun and fairly interesting, these lead into some more mellow jazz songs that were enjoyable but nothing mind blowing. The first set was sort of boring in my opinion and was basically background music to the various conversations going on but one part that sticks out was a really sweet solo by a guest percussionist. I'm at a loss as to who this percussionist was, he was fairly older and he stopped his solo to pull his pants up haha and then continued and lead the band into a really cool salsaish jam which they must love to play since I definitely recognized it. The show was really all about the second set which was pretty much funked out to the max, John Medeski is really the quintessential mad scientist when it comes to the keys and he really lived up to this part during this set. They got really funky and fun during this set with Medeski going to town on his melodica, all in all fun show but I seem to have to these grand memories of amazing MMW shows and I thought they didn't really live up to my memories. It could of been that I have just put them on some kind of musical pedestal in my brain or that I'm just looking for something different right now or even that I've just been pretty down recently but I thought the show was kind of standard fair with nothing really worth talking about. I'm pretty far from sober right now though and kind of surprised that this post came together in a relatively coherent manner (i think...) so maybe I will have a different recollection of this show when I wake up but yeah, could of been better, thank god for good friends.