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...and it sucked. I left bored before the set was over. A lot of this was the fault of the sound person who was fucking up everyone's sound last night, especially those with vocals (it was the Halleluwah Festival here in Portland at Holocene). I couldn't understand a word of what he sang, and I think it may have been in English! Some of what went wrong is the result of what Damo does though.
The concept of a legendary artist gathering a bunch of top notch local musicians he's never played with at every show and improvising sounds good on paper. Certainly I was looking forward to seeing what would happen when he played with White Rainbow and the Yellow Swans among others. However, the "among others" part was a bit of a problem. There were too damn many musicians who'd never played together going at once and with bad sound, I'd bet they could barely hear each other as well.
I saw Stephen Stapleton of Nurse With Wound a few months ago do this same sort of thing and that too was unfocused and eventually boring. He too had way too many unfamiliar musicians on stage. Jandek pulls off this sort of thing by keeping it down to two other people, plus they clearly do sound check and rehearse a bit, and since he's doing guitar and vocals there is some sort of lead to the music.
I'm sure on other nights Damo pulls this off much better, but it was a disappointment to watch somebody that important just faking it by chanting inside a wall of meandering half attempts at starting something. The night wasn't a complete loss, as Climax Golden Twins and Evolutionary Jass Band both turned in stellar sets, notably without vocals.
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