#TDIH Worcester MA 2/20/2003 Pt 2

This week's #ThisDealInHistory is the second excerpt i've pulled from our Feb 21, 2003 concert at the Palladium in Worcester, MA. The clip starts out with the intro to "Receiver" - this time in a smooth downtempo style (with the bass playing the lead melody!). I'm improvising a bunch of dense jazz chords underneath that completely change the harmonic tone and character of the original melody. Often times we would do this for fun and to see just how far away we could get from the original piece and still make it sound good. This opening section is a perfect example of that. Side note - I love the chord we land on at 1:05... Things start getting dubby (note the bass shifting slowly into dub around 1:15) until 2:00 when we shift gears into the familiar "Receiver" vibe. The Juno 106 (w flanger) provides a single-note drone which the bass guitar circles around for a while until we build up and change key right on the drop at 3:46. "Receiver" was an immensely popular song of ours for a number of years. We haven't played it in a long time, although we've recently been considering bringing it back. Fun fact - The Disco Biscuits' Marc Brownstein refuses to call this song by its real name - instead referring to it as "Bong Bong" (because of the big hits that we play in the main melody). We drop into some weird robot synth jam at 4:53 where, i guess, we decided that our chakras weren't in alignment with that key (or we just made a fast change) because ten seconds later we modulate to a new one. Great interplay here between the drums, bass and synth - everybody filling in different parts of the bar. Journey (the band) has had a spot in the New Deal's heart for as long as I can remember. I'm not really sure why that is, as none of us are really fans of the band (although you can't really deny the catchiness of their hits) - i think it probably has to do with their general over-the-top musical demeanour, the whole early 1980's-ness of it all, and the fact that we watched their "Behind The Music" about 35 times on our tour bus. There have been a handful of shows where we've tried to cram as many Journey covers/teases into a show as we could... In this instance I break out "Separate Ways" at 6:05. We never really knew how to play their songs, so you can hear us quickly processing whatever musical memories we can while we're jamming it on the spot. I start to get it (sort-of) right around 8:48, just in time to switch back into Receiver, which we do through a bunch of atonal synth licks coupled with some angular beats courtesy of Darren. We go into halftime for the B section but only for a short bit before we speed it up and take it home. -Jamie