This week’s #ThisDealInHistory is the second one taken from our 10/17/2003 performance in Ottawa, Ontario at Barrymore’s Music Hall.
The clip starts with the transition out of what sounds like the end of a “Birds In The Ocean, Pt. 2” jam into a Moog and (spacey) Nord-led build that intensifies for 90 seconds before landing on the main section of “Glide” at 3:07.
I believe I may have been playing the trigger cue for “G-nome” but upon repeated listens i think it may have just been a similar melody (which the sharp ears out there will notice that I also repeat at 3:18 in the middle of the main “Glide” melody).
A quick key change at 4:16 and we’re into a signature “James Guitar Shields Delay Pedal Adventure”. 4:16 - 4:56 is pretty far-out but I eventually settle into a new melody while keeping the delay high in the mix. It sounds like I’ve got the rate going super-short with a LOT of feedback, creating a super-glitchy/bent synth tone. It’s pretty cool how, with a little experimentation, one can get some interesting sonic results with a minimum of hardware.
We stumble into “Billy Jean” at 6:42 - this version featuring some filtered Moog in conjunction with Darren’s beatbox. This tease usually only comes around if one of us hears Dan playing a similar bass line.
This evening’s “Billy Jean” is quick as I trigger the cue for “Sub Sky” at 8:09 and eight seconds later (8:17) we’re into it with the precision and focus of a mercenary strike force.
Or are we?
It turns out that the other guys didn’t quite catch that cue so what we have here is the New Deal’s tribute to the composer Charles Ives as we play two very different songs simultaneously. Dan’s playing the intro to “Back To The Middle” in C-minor, I’m playing the intro to “Sub Sky” in F#-minor and for the uninitiated - those are two very different keys.
BUT - as I’ve mentioned many times in the past, these mistakes sound pretty cool to us… so not only do we decide to roll along with this train wreck but we actually turn it into a musical passage and continue to hammer away at the two different songs for over a minute before arriving peacefully at “Sub Sky”. Those 70 seconds of tension actually helped to intensify the resolution into “Sub Sky” at 9:24. That’s why we do what we do…
The next section starts with a key change at 12:34 and Darren triggering the “Glide” return cue at 12:44. This whole #TDIH cut is taken from somewhere in the middle of a “Glide” jam so what we have now is a move towards the second half of “Sub Sky” followed by the end of “Glide”. Sort of like having parentheses inside other parentheses - you gotta remember to close them all out!
So we crash into the second half of “Sub Sky” with the trigger cue at 12:47 followed by the second half proper at 13:00, but then something interesting happens. As we build our way into what would usually be the ending reprise of the closing “Sub Sky” melody we instead take a left turn and dive into “Glide” at 16:43.
After we sort out the rhythmic confusion at 17:23 we wrap it all up in a nice bow and close it out with the final “Glide” notes still echoing in the hall. -Jamie
