MONSTER MAGNET and Spiritual Beggars
Pumpehuset, København 11/9/00 guest list
From Aural Innovations #14 (January 2001)
This was the first night of the European Tour for the God Says No LP. I showed up at the venue around 4:30 and walked up to the backstage entrance and there was Ed and Joe! I said hi and they said hey, recognized me right away. They had been here since the 7th and this was too bad as I could have showed them around. We chatted for a while about the Hawkestra, Atomic Bitchwax, etc, then Jon came and I bought the first copy they had sold of the Ribeye Brothers (side project of Tim and Jon). Ed gave me the new Atomic Bitchwax II CD. I saw them to Crop Circle at the soundcheck and went home for dinner with Lani and Clotho.
Spiritual Beggars began right at 9:00 and really kicked some ass. The band keep getting better and better all the time. The Hammond player is really getting more integrated in the sound and they are jamming more now. They opened with Homage and played a lot of the standard stuff they have over the last year like Wonderful World, Angel of Betrayal, Escaping and Euphoria. They had two excellent jams. Cool 42 minute set.
Tim had some really great images to start the show (I had asked him earlier if he had any new stuff for the show and he said a little). He used this it's a satanic drug thing you wouldn't understand moving around on the screen with other great images. Unfortunately, it is a big rock show instead of the psychedelic freakout party we would like it to be and when the big flashing lights are used most of the time you can barely see anything on the screen that Tim makes such an effort on. Too bad.. Anyway, they opened with Atomic Clock and the crowd went mad. Dave was very psyched up, this being the first show of the Europe tour and he said some of the same stuff he said last time they played here but seem to have a few new lines as well. The band was great (although they would later complain after the show that they made so many mistakes!). Medicine was really excellent and Ed did some great guitar and you could really hear him well. Sometimes Ed is really buried in their wall of sound. Powertrip was next and the crowd really got into it. Cry, Little Friend and Melt followed and they all sounded really excellent. I was impressed with the new songs a lot. (Ed told me that the versions are much better live that the CD is way over produced and slick for his and Joe's tastes) It was fun to see Dave play the sitar guitar during Cry. He would play the guitar on a few songs like Dinosaur Vacuum. God Says No was pretty laid back but cool. The best part of the show was for sure the Dinosaur Vacuum into Brainstorm into Dinosaur into Baby G. Very cool and very psychedelic. Dave even mentioned before Dinosaur that this is space rock and I hope those doing drugs took them half an hour ago! They were supposed to play Cage Around The Sun next but Jon spaced it and started the drum intro for Bummer. The band were changing their guitars for Cage and were quite surprised… He stopped and then started again and Dave said "the man wants to play Bummer". Negasonic closed the show. They came out and really kicked the house down with Tractor. Great version. Space Lord was very slow to work up and Dave was doing some rapping. He was very into the show and very much over the top the whole show. Cool show.
I hung out with Ed and Joe after the show backstage and we talked a lot. Tim and Jon came back after a while. Dave finally showed up. I said hi and went home. Great guys.
Set List: Atomic Clock, Medicine, Powertrip, Cry, Little Friend, Melt, Crop Circle, God Says no, Dinosaur Vacuum, Baby G, Bummer, Negasonic, Tractor, Space Lord (80 mins)
Reviewed by Scott Heller