Released: 2011
Tracks: Kedgeree; Blameless (The Floating Face); Life’s Too Small; Click; My Dilemma; Chee; Them Dolphins is Smart; 1988 Was a Million Years Ago; Yep, Them Dolphins is Smart, Alright; Bullys (sic); Pretty Enough for Girls; Taster; Tomorrow; Scotch; Chatfield Manor; Potato
Best track: Click
Track to skip: Bullys is kind of boring, but I’ll usually let it play through
This is a continuation of the review for Bryan Beller’s Wednesday Night Live. On September 15, 2010, the Bryan Beller and Mike Keneally Bands played a show at the Baked Potato in LA. Both sets were recorded and subsequently released on audio and video. So, I’m going through these as they happened, one after the other. Super Cool Thing: both bands featured the same band members for both sets: Beller on bass, Keneally on guitar/keys/vocals, Griff Peters on guitar, Rick Musallam on guitar and Joe Travers on drums. I caught the bands on the same tour in Baltimore and it was an amazing show. On to Keneally’s set!
While the actual release of Beller’s set split the DVD and CD, with Keneally’s you get both in the same package. Keneally’s Guitar Therapy Live DVD was also recorded at the Baked Potato and he always seems to play well there. The DVD of this Bakin’ show features 4 songs not included on the CD: Hallmark, Cold Hands, Natty Trousers & Career Politicians. This set features a nice cross-selection from most of Mike’s albums with a heavy dose of material from Boil That Dust Speck. Having three guitarists in the band enabled Mike to play some songs truer to the original versions and also enabled him to stretch out on arrangements of others. The three-guitar lineup really beefs up such songs like Click, My Dilemma, Chee, Pretty Enough for Girls and Chatfield Manor. Click is my favorite on the disc – the arrangement is fantastic and closer to the original Nonkertompf version than I’ve ever heard. Having two guitarists besides himself in the band really opens things up and enables him to either play keys, or go all out and have so much kick ass guitar (as on Chatfield Manor) that my head certainly felt like it was going to explode. Newcomer Griff Peters is a hell of a guitarist and I hope he stays in Keneally’s band for a long time.
Kedgeree is a fantastic way to open the set; power right through the gate. Next is Blameless and while the three guitarist-lineup makes this one sound great, it’s such a bad placement of having it second song in the set and right after Kedgeree. Life’s Too Short doesn’t help things either, as it’s barely an average song and definitely not one of my favorites on the Scambot 1 album. It’s not too thrilling live either…until the middle section and guitar solo, which are infinitely cool. After this, the set really settles in and we get the aforementioned Click , an awesome jammed-out version of My Dilemma, Scambot 1 standout Chee and then the real meat of the set: Dolphins > Bullys > Pretty Enough > Taster. All 4 songs (6 if you count the 3 movements of Dolphins) flow together perfectly and present some eclectic and inspired playing. This 5-piece band could be heavy as hell with Tomorrow and Scotch back to back showing how much playing in Dethklok has rubbed off on Mike and Bryan. Potato’s a naturally perfect way to end the show.
I think that the band sounded better playing Bryan Beller’s material, but there are enough “wow” moments in Keneally’s set to make this a worthwhile purchase. Guitar Therapy Live is definitely a better live album, but I love how this one is so different than that one (no Dog or Hat material, for one thing) and neither album shares even a single song. Bakin’ and Wednesday Night Live are both tremendous documents of this phenomenal band.
Rating: 91
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