Ah screw it, vol. 2. Let's get on with Vegas 2021 this afternoon, shall we? 
Onwards to The Numbers Show. First set looks unbelievable. 2nd set looks like it's a victim of circumstance. We shall see.
10/28/21 Las Vegas, NV
Set 1
2001 - A massive 16+ minute version to open the show!!!! Starting
with spooky ambience, surely nobody expected this. It slowly gets
stranger and stranger and more aggressive, the longer it lasts. Finally
around the 2:30 mark it gives way to the beat. Not much to say - they
jam uber funkily as expected until the first go-around of the main riff
around 7:20. Great stuff. Following the 2nd time for the main lick, Trey
kicks on super low bullfrog-type robo FX and proceeds to honk it up for
a while before moving over to the wah pedal around 10:50. At this
point, Page moves over to the piano, giving the funkiness a slightly
jazzy twinge! This is sick. Around the 12 minute mark,
things take a subtle shift again when Trey starts to play with a
standard tone again. So Page on the Piano and Trey on regular sounds,
this is raging pretty darn hard. Finally, around 13:40, Trey hits one
note and just peaks the hell outta this sucker. From here the jam begins
to rise skywards and you can tell they are gonna rage it hard to a
climax. Great stuff and an absolutely essential listen. Classic 2001!!!!
1999 - Oh jeez, nearly 15 minutes on THIS!!!! Rages hard with
the type 1 funk until around the 7 minute mark. Everyone lays off the
FX and it suddenly gets nice and blissful, for lack of a better word.
Around 9:30 the piano starts banging and the jam gets into a harder,
more "classic rock" kinda feel. This goes until the 12 minute mark when
things suddenly start to slowly shift to a darker, more menacing kind of
feel. Dark 1999, let's go! This eventually results in a great peak around 14 minutes and the guys bring her on home to close.
555 - Nearly 10 minutes. This one lays hard into the robotic
chill and darkness. Very spooky sounding. Definitely very "Halloween"
sounding. Goes from dark and spooky to blissfully chill. One thing is certain though, this sucker is laid back.
>46 Days - And after a ramshackle transition it's into a massive 15 minute 46 Days. This is gonna be good! Blissfully
funky as expected until around the 15 minute mark. Suddenly the synths
come in and we drop into dark Type II like 555 was hinting at. The jam
kinda falters briefly, nearly collapsing upon itself, until it slowly
starts to rise from the murky swamp it buried itself in. Out come the
delays and the crazy synthesizers. Fishman going ham on the cymbals
while Trey is knee-deep in robo FX. Hands down the best jamming so far. Holy crap. By
6:30, the darkness is slowly beginning to be replaced by more blissful
waters, but only just. Suddenly again, around the 8:30 mark, this is all
replaced in a flash with calmer, more introspective playing from all.
Page on the piano, marching beats from Fishman, clean tones from Trey.
Etc. Finally, around the 9 minute mark, they move back into a harder,
more "classic rock" feel. This builds and builds until right around the
10 minute mark Trey hits that note and the whole thing
peaks out nicely. Great peak, if not extreme. Around 12:30, the peak
concludes and it's back into 46 Days proper.Then, at 13:30, they
slowly build it all up AGAIN! Into one more volcanic, explosive peak!!!
And the song explodes to it's conclusion....
WOW!! That 46 Days was really something special! It was like a movie or some epic journey! Total Type II madness!
Strawberry Letter 23 - Doesn't work at all at this point in the set,
imo, but their hand was forced with the set placement tonight! Ok version, kinda sloppy. Nothing to write home about.
20 Years Later - Holy crap, nearly 17 minutes on this sucker. Damn! The
jam starts very chill and goes as such until around the 7 minute mark.
At that point it turns into an unnaturally happy and blissful feeling.
Very unusual considering the source of the jam, lol. VERY SLOWLY, things
start to get spacier and spacier until by the 10 minute mark, we are in
strangely blissful robot honkerville. It progressively gets more and
more extreme until by 12 minutes all signs of bliss are far in the
rearview mirror. HOLY CRAP BATMAN WE ARE GETTING SUCKED INTO THE SYNTHESIZER WORMHOLE!!! HOLD ON TO YOUR HAT!!!! Finally,
having reached the furthest reaches of deep space, we exit the other
side around 14:45. Trey proceeds to then just shred it up and the jam
takes on a slower feel, returning back to the main 20 Years Later theme.
It was hard to explain this jam - SO MUCH happenned and it went
as deep as you could possibly imagine. Deeper than 46 Days. Absolute X
Factor insanity, seriously. Holy hell.
And with that, the most ridiculous first set of all time comes to a
close. All in all, it was awkward and stiff at times, but you can't deny
the 4 or 5 DEEP jams contained within. Not my favorite set of the year,
but it wins on sheer effort alone. The 46 Days and the deep space 20
Years are among the finest jams of 2021 though. Period. End of story.
And the hits keep coming!
Seven Below - SEVENTEEN minutes on this one!!!! The initial jamming is extremely melodic on this sucker. Ultra "aquatic", building to lots of nice quasi-peak sections early on. Killer. Finally around the 6:30 mark is when deviation begins to occur. Taking time to find it's footing, first they play with more piano-based things before Trey goes for broke and kicks on the delay pedal. The jam nearly falls apart for a solid minute or so, as the guys are unsure of a direction. Yucky. Thankfully around 8:30, Page kicks on the trusty THX synths and slowly we get to work towards something. They build it from here until they regain their footing and get back into a disctinctly "Seven Below" style jam. Somehow, around the 12:30 mark, the bottom falls out, and we drift into ambient seascapes! Imagine lying on the beach with the waves crashing. Or something like that. Then, around 13 minutes, Trey starts slowly riffing and the jam starts to rebuild into something more lumbering and powerful. Very slowly, we get into a kind of majestically powerful stomp of a jam, everyone laying down a thick, piano-driven base while Trey goes all 1997 Tweezerbella atop it, just shredding it up all slow-like. This is gnarly. The X Factor has returned. Around 16:30 we begin to drift back into the darkness and the song fades to a conclusion...
Holy crap what was that. It took a long while to get going, but the final 5 or 6 minutes were as "X Factor Magic" as you could want. Incredible music!!!
If Six Was Nine - Finally a new Hendrix cover! And 15 minutes at that! Thankfully, this new cover sounds exceptionally well rehearsed and they take to it like it's always been in the repertoire!!! Incredible! Around 3:30 the synths come in blaring and Trey just proceeds to then lay waste to everything in earshot. This is friggin SICK! Around 5 minutes we are already deep into fiery heat land when things take a turn for the dark and demented. Very quickly however, the jam dies down and by the 7 minute mark, you'd almost think we were back in Seven Below or the quieter portions of 20 Years Later. Synths abound, Trey doing robo textures, this is friggin incredible. Around the 8:30 mark things begin to pick back up. Page is back on the electric keys while Trey is vamping it up. By 10 minutes the jam kinda regains normality and the boys start to riff on a more rocky kind of feel, though it's still all over the place. Very slowly, the jam begins to rise like a phoenix and by the 12 minute mark we are knee-deep into some peakage in the making!!! Feel that X Factor flowing boys and girls!! Holy crap this jam is amazing! Around the 13:50 mark the jam descends/ascends into HOLY CRAP HOLD ON TO YOUR FRIGGIN HAT WE HAVE ENTERED THE WORMHOLE AGAIN!!! DEEP SPACE MELTDOWN!!!!! And then as quickly as it happens, Page jumps in on the piano and derails the deep space! BOO! And unfortunately from here the jam dies a sad death.
That was incredible but the ending of it was HOT GARBAGE!
>Five Years - Bowie cover. Great stuff.
Two Versions of Me - Very rare version of this song is up next. Great to hear, wish they played this more! I can't call this one great - it's a tad awkward for it's own good, but it does have a surprisingly nice jam for several minutes at the end! No, seriously, a jammed out Two Versions?! Where the hell did this come from?!
>NO2 - TWO VERSIONS WENT TYPE II!!! WHAT THE HELL!!!! And into the dentist's chair we sit! Feeling a little drowsy?
Seriously, what the hell is going on. Two Versions>NO2 is one of the most "x factor WTF?!" moments I've ever heard.Army of One - I guess the set needed a break at some point, eh? Great version but nothing special overall.
My Sweet One - Is MSO.
First Tube - Excellent with a sick Type II jam for a solid 5 minutes!!!!!
Character Zero - See First Tube. Closes the set.
Number Line - First encore. Is Number Line
Grind - is Grind.
All in all...holy crap what a BEAST of a show!!! The second kind of falls off a cliff after Two Versions, but that was kinda unavoidable. 2/3 of this show were among the best music of the year and this would slot in nicely with the Baker's Dozen me thinks. The big issue was that they were often "disconnected" at times and unsure of their own playing/jamming. It almost always took time for things to click, but when they did, woah boy, MULTIPLE trips into the multiversal wormhole in one show?!?!?!?!?!?! Yea, good stuff.
On to night 2!
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