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Or more like "on a stage with Mike Keneally." His band has changed several times over the years since 1994 (the year I joined); first it was a power trio, then a four-piece (add keyboards), then a six piece (add sax and another guitar), then a seven-piece (add melodic percussion), then back to a quartet again (two guitars, bass, drums). Thanks to the most documentarily fastidious fans on the planet, I have "unofficial" audience recordings from every era. (You know who you are - thanks to all.) There are also two official Keneally live releases from 1996: the double-CD Half Alive In Hollywood, and the full-length VHS concert/documentary Soap Scum Remover. What's here is, in my mind, the best of the best based on the following criteria: band performance, bass performance, overall sound, presence of bass in the mix, and representation of a particular era. NOTE: Obviously, some of these being "unofficial" recordings, the audio quality varies. Also, I recommend a perusal of the Official Mike Keneally Taping Policy, for karma's sake. You should also know that these files are mp3's of the full song listed, some as long as eight minutes. Needless to say, some file sizes will be large. UPDATE: This page also contains some Bryan Beller solo project live audio! Obviously if it's posted here it's OK to circulate. All I ask is, if you haven't already, to get right with the cause and purchase a copy of my one and only solo album View at one of these fine online retailers. "Supermarket
People" This tune seems to be the most fun to play of any of my admittedly dense material, and never was it more fun than when we did it at WesFest to raise money for the Wes Wehmiller Memorial Scholarship at Berklee College Of Music. (If you don't know what this is all about, please go here to learn more about Wes.) The recording is actually a feed off of the board, so Dave Foster gets to take credit for capturing it, but the hyper-compressed drums and low-mixed keyboards and second electric bass (under my solo) aren't his responsibility, so lay off him. It's not the cleanest of executions, but it's the greasiest, vibe-y-est version we've done so far, and I'm more appreciative of that element with each passing day. I left on the introduction of the band at the end of the sound file, because they're badasses and deserve props.
"See
You Next Tuesday" Just thinking about doing this song live was a scary thought. Rock swing at warp speed a la vintage trio Beer For Dolphins, "See You Next Tuesday" was intended to be more a musical temper tantrum than anything else. Unfortunately it was the guitar part that bore the brunt of the punishment. This song is just so unfairly, impossibly difficult to play on baritone guitar that even Mike Keneally himself never played it correctly even once all the way through...until the show, where as you'll hear, he destroyed it with flawless fury. Meanwhile, Joe Travers is swinging his ass off on drums, and I've got the bass overdrive cranked to 11, and maybe even past that. Note: it takes about a minute to get off the ground, because I was changing instruments (I'd just finished the acoustic number "No".) Also, this is so freakin' frenetic that, if you haven't heard the album version of this song yet, you might want to do that first. "Get
Things Done" First I swore I'd never play a live show, then I swore I'd never let anyone hear the document. (Sigh.) This is a beastly tune to try and pull off live - seven-plus minutes of fusion form, licks, groove and soloing. Plus it's got my absolute least favorite thing in the world: an extended bass solo. What to do? Pull a Steve Vai and play the solo from the record, of course. (OK, with some embellishments. Maybe I'll even improvise at some point in the future.) So why did I choose this particular tune to post? Because the band absolutely KILLS it from start to finish, and the mix is pretty nice (props to Dave Foster on the post-production of a fairly rough audience document), and I just can't believe it even happened at all. Joe Travers' performance on this is really incredible when you consider that he was the only rhythm instrument on a tune that originally contained several tracks of percussion and a hi-hat overdub. For the record, this is Griff Peters on lead guitar, Rick Musallam on rhythm guitar, Mike Keneally on Hammond organ, Joe Travers on drums, Wes Wehmiller on bass while I'm soloing, and myself on bass at all other times.
"The
Knife & Drum" "Career
Politicians"
This tune was the musical apex of the "Nonkertompf Live" performance, where the seven-piece Keneally band was joined by four additional Dutch musicians for ninety minutes of truly Zappa-inspired chart-reading and without-a-net group improvisation. This lineup is unique, so it should be listed in full: Mike Keneally (lead guitar), Oene van Geel (violin), Jan Willem van der Ham (bassoon), Bart van Lier (trombone), Ruben van Roon (samples, keyboards), Evan Francis (flute), Tricia Steel (vibes, percussion), Rick Musallam (guitar), Marc Ziegenhagen (keyboards, Rhodes), Nick D'Virgilio (drums), myself (bass).
There was unusually good sound in the house on this night of the Quartet Tour, and thankfully we turned in several performances worth the CD's they were burned on. The Quartet is: Keneally (vocals, guitar), Rick Musallam (guitar), Nick D'Virgilio (drums), and myself (bass). This song-originally recorded by The Mistakes over six years ago-was reborn for us in 2001.
"Selfish
Otter" A breakneck-paced swing tune given to free-form exploration in its conception, this version had "firsts" that served as landmarks for renditions throughout the rest of the tour. Cliff's Notes: The Mike Keneally band meets Sun Ra. Like the tune listed above, this is the Quartet at Lynagh's, that magical club in Kentucky.
"Naked
Horse (Tressa Version)" The levels may be a little low, and the sound a little boomy, but it's worth it to hear what happened when Keneally handed over conducting duties for this heavily-cued piece to a female audience member named Tressa Cincotta. Again, with the Quartet lineup mentioned above.
"The
Dolphins Suite" This and the following two tracks are the best examples I could find of the 1998 band in action, whose lineup was Keneally, myself, Marc Ziegenhagen (keyboards) and Jason Harrison Smith (drums). The Boston show was recorded in multi-track fashion by Scott Lurowist and dressed up nicely by Ron Spiegelhalter, has the benefit of some post-production, and exists as an practically untraded bootleg under the name Boston Shall Suck Our Cocks. (Don't bother asking them for the whole thing; they've been ordered from on high not to give up the goods.) Major thanks are due to Scott and Ron, as their final product proved to be the only one from that tour with audio quality worth presenting in this forum. As for the song, the "Suite" is a medley of three songs from the Boil That Dust Speck album, and wasn't the easiest bit of material to pull off live. This version was as good as any. "Tug" Recorded on 8/15/98 at Mama Kin, Boston, MA © 1997 Spen Music (BMI) A rare non-raging moment for the 1998 band, featuring Jason Harrison Smith doing a damned good Bernard Purdie impersonation on this slow funk shuffle. This song was written all the way back in 1986 and originally appeared on The Tar Tapes Vol. 1, Keneally's collection of such chestnuts. A nice respite from some of the more intense material we did on this tour.
The '98 band's rendition of the bonus studio track from the otherwise live Half Alive In Hollywood, and very representative of the wild material this band pulled off on a regular basis. This has always been one of my personal favorites in the repertoire. In this night's set, it actually came right after the ballad "Tug" listed just above.
The official
Beer For Dolphins power trio lineup of Keneally, myself, and Toss Panos
on drums won the lottery during a local show: we pulled off a flawless
performance from start to finish, and it was recorded off the board
in near-perfect fashion-without the benefit of a separate mix. There
are far more dense pieces of music than the two I've chosen to post
here, but these have the most audible and active basslines. Yeah, I'm
selfish like that.
"Dhen
Tin" The opener
from the same show, which eventually became Disc 2 of Half Alive
In Hollywood. Pronounced like the chewing gum, with the spelling
changed to protect the not-so-innocent. This tune is a lot harder than
it sounds.
"Performing
Miracles" In the
beginning.there was a seedy club in the San Fernando Valley that
served as a proving ground for Keneally's early power trio material.
The very first of these Bourbon Square shows had Joe Travers on drums,
and a good portion of it ended up on Keneally's Soap Scum Remover,
a concert/documentary of the late-1995 era. The audio I grabbed from
the VHS-format release is passable, but not much better than that. However,
with Travers behind the kit, there's plenty of good old fashioned hard-rock
fury to make up for the borderline sound quality.
"Career/Quimby
/ I Can't Stop" Same show,
same lineup, and a motherfucker of a chunk of music. This "medley" consisted
of a lick from the aforementioned "Career Politicians," a twisted re-arrangement
of "Your Quimby Dollars At Work" from Keneally's first album hat,
and a fast-paced ska-flavored pop tune called "I Can't Stop," featuring
a wide-open improv middle section. It's one of those pieces you can
get silly with if you know it well enough, and we screwed around with
the form to the point where we almost trashed it entirely. Again, questionable
audio, but I thought it worth posting anyway. |
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