BOC: Soloing and band mechanics- a discussion

[Bolts of Ungodly Vision]

>> AL should stick to the keys, IMHO.  He
>sometimes does a pretty awful acoustic blues thing as a preamble to
>In Thee.  Adds nothing to the show.
As T.Jackson pointed out before the non bluesness of BOC's catalog does
make this jam out of place, but then again Lanier can play guitar pretty
well, as evidenced in the solo section of Harvester of Eyes and the
structure of Gil Blanco County-a whalin' guitar tune.  But yes, he does
need to show of his keyboradmanship more...the 'boards didn't get too much
emphasis in the mix when you listen to _BOC_ and remain mainly in the
background, barely, in everything else till you get to _ST_ I think.  They
should have used the keyboards skills in the studio the way Lanier's sway
and shimmy successfully on the live version of "WoTT"..or something like
that.


>Buck is doing a little bluesy solo prior to "The Reaper" these days
>too.  While I think it's nice to see the respective members' talents,
I always thought of the Buck only guitar intro as Buck's version of Brain May in
"Brighton Rock," noodling around with delay pedals and all that electronic
chicanery...but sandly it really doesn't fit in well with such a well
established slab of the BOC concert set. Either way, he plays well:)

>that follow it.  And, as has been discussed here, perhaps the bass and
>drum solos in Godzilla should either 1) be shortened, 2) be moved so
>they aren't both in the same song, or 3) be eliminated.  Personally, I
>think each bandmember should get some soloing time, but it should be
>fairly brief, and preferably spread out throught the show, and integrated
>with the songs played -- BOC has always been a BAND, not just a collection
>of 5 individuals (which is why some still dream of the original lineup
>reforming - get over it folks, it ain't gonna happen) - this is why the
>5 guitars was so cool - yeah, it was sort of a "solo" spot, but it
>featured the whole band.
It seems what we are l;ooking for is a return to the live set construction
we hear on _OYFoOYK_, where everyone has a piece of the spotlight, allowing
the song structures to be versatile (especially with the endall and be all
of the group effort (IMHO)- "7SDb") enough to keep solos tastefull and not
go too far into the realm of longness. best example of the 5Man solo
working successfully in the song (at least as I've heard it being done) is
in ME262 on the same lp.
If we wanted long meandering solos out of context, we should look to Deep
Purple c. 1972 :)hehehe.  I wonder why the band , once centered more along
the lines of shifting instrument parts and tweekage of song formats in "the
good ol' days," has opted more for sticking to the LP versions of tunes we
all know and love...I know the band has definately enough talent to pull
off their group viruosity these days w/ Miranda and (insert drummer's name
here).  One would think that the old style of BOC song interpretation would
be popular in this age which has been recently given over to popularity of
an alraming scale on college campuses to the Grateful Dead, Phish, etc.

The drum break in godzilla, when I saw BOC in Utica, was thankfully shorter
than I expected it to be and involved audience repsonce (John Micelli was a
darm good drummerboy for the band), which kept the momentum of the tune
thankfully in place.

Preaching the goodness of 70's guitar icons to college dwellers,
Jason