Bolero

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to see the band moe.  Wikipedia tells me that they formed around 1989 and quickly established themselves on the Jam Band scene.  They're super talented.  This is the first time I've seen them, but I went with others who are far better versed in the music than I am.  The truly dedicated fashion themselves as "moe.-rons."  I get it.  Having seen a band (Phish) well over 30 times since 2003, and studying the Grateful Dead as I am wont to do, I understand the seemingly blind devotion to something super familiar, and at the same time, new and powerful. 

I try to explain this to those who see a band once and then they're done.  As I'm a music snob, I equate this musical disconnect to people who bus-trip through the National Parks.  The bus parks, everyone gets off at the popular spot, takes their picture, and an hour later, they're on the bus to the next one.  To me, that's like having the entire menu trotted out so you can look at it, but not eat it.  But my metaphors are multiplying.  I digress.  The point is, I get why a band that's been around since the early 1990's remains popular today.  The secret is in the jam: they never play a song the same way twice. 

That said, I left the show a little unimpressed (see: music snob above).  My chief complaint was that the sound was off.  No, they didn't play "wrong notes" as, there are no wrong notes in an improvised jam.  No, my issue was the sound: levels between the vocals and the instruments weren't well balanced.  It was neigh impossible to understand what the singer was crooning during a song.  I get that your ability to hear well is largely dependent on where you are in a venue.  Are you too close to a speaker?  Are you too far back in the hall that the reverberation is causing an echo?  To combat this, we were standing next to the sound board where the engineer was fiddling with microphone levels the entire night.  That's usually a good rule of thumb: it makes sense to hear the band the way the engineer hears the band in order to get the best mix.  Well, that night he was off.

To give the band a second chance, I bought a download of that same show.  This is a common offering made by the jam band scene: you can download the show you saw weeks, days or even hours after you've seen it so as to have a perfect souvenir of your experience.  Again, blame the Grateful Dead for this as they've always been friendly to "tapers" (those who set up their own microphones and recording equipment...usually in front of the soundboard, get it?) and, at times, even allowed concert goers to plug directly into the board itself for the "best" quality recordings.  In these digital times, a company named nugs.net got together with Phish and Metalica (not exactly an exclusively jam band offering) and started making the music available to those who want to purchase it. 

So I've given this show a second listening, and I was still not "moved."  The dudes on the stage in moe. were extremely talented, especially the gentleman on vibraphone...which couldn't be heard well because, again, there were level issues.  No, the real reason why I didn't fall head over heals for this show was the severe lack of climax.  I call this the lack of the Bolero effect. 

Have you heard Ravel's "Bolero?"  It's best heard rather than explained, but the premise is simple enough: start softly and slowly crescendo over the course of many minutes within a piece, adding more complexities, more instruments, and lastly, more decibels until the music is at its peak roar, the audience is on its feat and it all ends in a fantastic explosion of coordinated sound.  Jerry did this.  Trey does this.  But, sadly, moe. does not.  The jams were good, but they started at 7 or 8 and kept them there for the duration of several 15 minute songs.  Listening using 80% of your concentration on a song is hard to do over long periods (see: Frank Zappa who did this deliberately), frequently resulting in what my uncle helped coin: a swirling mind turd.

While I'm applying this to music I've recently seen, the same logic can be made with some of today's most popular movies or TV shows.  Avengers: Infinity War nailed this, The Shape of Water comes close...as does Game of Thrones, sometimes over the course of the season, sometimes over the course of an episode.  Would I see moe. again?  To tell the truth, probably.  I've got a couple of early recordings, and some of their songs are solid, despite lacking the crescendo I have come to expect from other groups.  No moe.-ron here until they can match the power of what Phish does with You Enjoy Myself...but because every show is different, there's a chance that they (moe.) attain "Bolero": achievement unlocked.  But, I guess I'll have to keep going in order to find that out.