Caleb3221
01-21-2006, 08:26 AM
And, it was amazing. It was the first night of their first tour since their year long hiatus. Everything about the night was great(Except the drummer, which I'll get to momentarily).
Victor was slightly drowned out, but his playing was great. I had previously kind of viewed him as skilled but tasteless from alot of the recordings and such that get thrown around as impressive. I was hugely wrong. In a band situation, his taste is impeccable. He played hard grooves, kept everything solid the whole night. Complemented the music very well, and had his usual innovative and crazy ideas come through too. He had one solo in the middle, which was amazing. Everyone aelse left stage, he used a loop pedal thing, laid down the "drums", then some background, then solod. Once again, I was suprised that it didn't consist of him slapping as fast as he could for 3 minutes-it was a very tasteful, melodic solo. He also had an interesting part of looping a rather intricate riff one note at a time, which is too hard to describe to be worth trying.
The rest of the band, and the music was great as well. Bela Fleck himself is an absolute monster on the banjo, and the wind player was definatley up there with the others(which is saying a lot when you've got Bela and Victor on stage).
Only complaint was with the "drummer", Futureman or something is what he goes by. He has a drumset on stage, but barely uses it, getting the bulk of what he does from his homebrew keytar like drum module. I'll give him that he is really good at playing it. That dosen't make it sound good. It's still imprecise and sloppy to an extent, and a lot of times it just dosen't fit. The sounds aren't amazingly realistic, and it was missing alot of the dynamic control a drummer should have for a situation like that. He also overplayed, and was a bit too loud. The most disturbin part, though, was his really obnoxious bass drum which is about the same frequency as Victors bass playing. When futureman stopped, Victor came through fine, but when he started pounding that thing again, victor got lost in the mix. That bothered me.(Note that all that's coming from a drummer, so I might be a bit more nitpicky.)
Anyway, overall, amazing show. No one probably cares, but whatever.
Victor was slightly drowned out, but his playing was great. I had previously kind of viewed him as skilled but tasteless from alot of the recordings and such that get thrown around as impressive. I was hugely wrong. In a band situation, his taste is impeccable. He played hard grooves, kept everything solid the whole night. Complemented the music very well, and had his usual innovative and crazy ideas come through too. He had one solo in the middle, which was amazing. Everyone aelse left stage, he used a loop pedal thing, laid down the "drums", then some background, then solod. Once again, I was suprised that it didn't consist of him slapping as fast as he could for 3 minutes-it was a very tasteful, melodic solo. He also had an interesting part of looping a rather intricate riff one note at a time, which is too hard to describe to be worth trying.
The rest of the band, and the music was great as well. Bela Fleck himself is an absolute monster on the banjo, and the wind player was definatley up there with the others(which is saying a lot when you've got Bela and Victor on stage).
Only complaint was with the "drummer", Futureman or something is what he goes by. He has a drumset on stage, but barely uses it, getting the bulk of what he does from his homebrew keytar like drum module. I'll give him that he is really good at playing it. That dosen't make it sound good. It's still imprecise and sloppy to an extent, and a lot of times it just dosen't fit. The sounds aren't amazingly realistic, and it was missing alot of the dynamic control a drummer should have for a situation like that. He also overplayed, and was a bit too loud. The most disturbin part, though, was his really obnoxious bass drum which is about the same frequency as Victors bass playing. When futureman stopped, Victor came through fine, but when he started pounding that thing again, victor got lost in the mix. That bothered me.(Note that all that's coming from a drummer, so I might be a bit more nitpicky.)
Anyway, overall, amazing show. No one probably cares, but whatever.