It was really, really good. My son and I were all in on it, and he got so inspired that he's upstairs right now trying to stack his own vocals to an instrumental track of Steely Dan's "Green Earrings."

Songs they did:

Hold the Line (great)
You Are the Flower (more of a Strat-type tone for Luke on the solo. I always thought Bobby sounded best on the R&B-type material like this, Mama, or Waiting For Your Love so this was a superb tribute).

White Sister (fantastic and Sput REALLY drove it along)

Rosanna (excellent vocal mix, and the sax solo for Steve P's part was a cool touch)
I Won't Hold You Back (with guitar doing the main piano intro. Very nice)

Til the End (energetic, excellent - one of my favorite JW songs)

Pamela (vocal mix was great, a welcome return for this song)
Stop Loving You (maybe even better - Sput absolutely nailed the stop-go sections)
Home of the Brave (Warren actually bettered David for the low vocal - much better)

Kingdom of Desire (not my favorite from that album, but they played it really well. Luke's guitar tone was excellent here)

With a Little Help (a bit more of a gospel chorus feel, and it was REALLY effective when Sput took them to double time briefly. Not hugely different than the Absolutely Live version, but believe it or not . . . this was better. Vocal ad-libs in the round were excellent, too)

I knew they'd be good because I've seen most of the new musicians before in other contexts. Sput is a truly amazing drummer. Perhaps he's a little less Jeff-like than was Shannon, but he pushes the tempos just a little, and the whole thing felt really high-energy as a result. That might also have been the best version of White Sister that I've ever heard them do.

John Pierce was very solid. Not as demonstrative a performer as was Shem. I liked Shem's vocals but found the bass to be "just good enough." Pierce was a little bit more solid. And Moggio was a better backing singer in the context of this band, moving from soulful gospel ad-libs to full voice high parts to falsetto with ease.

X was as good as before, and the little piano solo he had early on was truly beautiful.

Joe has sounded good for many years now, appearing to really learn how to care for his voice. I'd say he was even better here than in late 2019 - with the rest perhaps helping. If they were to release this show on disc, he wouldn't need ANY fixes.

Steve was also excellent. Vocally, he was right on and his playing was as good as ever. He did take a more improvised pass on "Pamela." Maybe not as effective as the original, but it really worked well. He was moving better than last year, too, so maybe the shoulders have healed a little.

At our house, the stream quality was fine with not hitches at all. Even blown up out of the iPad in via HDMI in to the big-screen at home, the image was sharp, and the sound quality was excellent. Better than I expected. I had trouble making it full-screen view, but my son came to rescue on that - more technologically literate, I guess.

- < Listen to Jellyfish & Kevin Gilbert > -



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/22/2020 01:51PM by Ross S..