Villa Montalvo presents Dave Mason's Traffic Jam
2014-10-01
Carriage House Theatre
Villa Montalvo, 15400 Montalvo Dr, Saratoga, CA
7:m PM, Wednesday, October 1, 2014

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[7:32 PM seated and ready to go...] [7:34 PM lights down, announcements from Christa Stiner]

1. [7:39 PM] 40,000 Headmen #
2. [7:45 PM] You Can All Join In #
3. [7:49 PM] Pearly Queen (T)
   [7:56 PM pause to take care of technical gremlins; dead air; back 8:01 PM]
4. [8:02 PM] Medicated Goo
5. [8:07 PM] The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys @
6. [8:16 PM] Rock 'n' Roll Stew (T)
7. [8:21 PM] Dear Mr. Fantasy &
   [set ends 8:26 PM]

[8:46 PM lights down, waitin'…]

1. [8:46 PM] Only You Know and I Know
2. [8:53 PM] World in Changes #
3. [9:05 PM] How Do I Get to Heaven @#
4. [9:12 PM] Good 2 U #
5. [9:19 PM] We Just Disagree #
6. [9:22 PM] Let It Go, Let It Flow
7. [9:28 PM] Sleepwalk @
8. [9:30 PM] Shouldn't Have Took More Than You Gave @
9. [9:41 PM] Feelin' Alright
   [set ends 9:47 PM; offstage, back in a few]
   
   Encore
10. [9:51 PM] All Along the Watchtower
    [show ends 9:56 PM]

• Alvino Bennett: drums;
• Dave Mason: guitar, # 12-string electroacoustic guitar, lead and harmony vox;
• Tony Patler: organ, keyboards, synth bass, lead (s1t03, s1t06) and harmony vox;
• John Sambatero: guitar, @ acoustic guitar, percussion, harmony vox;
  - with special guest (s1t07 only) -
• Fred-the-truck-driver &: acoustic guitar, harmony vox.

Fun time at ole' Montalvo tonight, and made all the better by the thrashing that the SF Giants delivered to the Pittsburgh Pirates in their wild-card playoff game. Listening to the game did a lot to distract me from the stress of today's drive down – traffic was pretty awful – and it was fun watching the middle innings at Jake's in Saratoga while chowing down our burgers and slurping sweet beer (Deschutes IPA, yum!). We even lingered in the Montalvo parking lot, listening to the game on KNBR during the last few moments before the gig, and my guess is that more than a few fans were watching or listening to the end of the game as the show got underway.

So, uh, the show, that's probably why you're reading – not to hear baseball talk. I'd say the crowd was certainly a bit more buzzy and enthusiastic tonight than is typical for Montalvo, hard to know whether that was excitement over the game or instead the chance to see a rock and roll legend in such an intimate venue. Anyway, they were happy and boisterous and it made for a festive atmosphere.

The sound in the house was quite a bit louder than usual – possibly turned up to please the deaf old codger at the mic! – and also seemed to be panned unusually hard to the sides. Which is my backhanded way of complaining that despite sitting only two seats off the center-line, most of what I heard seemed to be coming from hard outside rather than the center fill speakers or onstage monitors. Bothers me quite a bit when things are like that, since it creates cognitive dissonance between what I'm looking at and what I'm hearing. The simple solution, of course, is to shut the eyes and just listen, but that makes for repeated weird moments every time the eyes are reopened. Another minor impediment to my enjoying the show was the slightly boorish shouting of the crowd – many of whom seemed to think that it was perfectly OK to interrupt Dave's monologues with their not-so-zingy one-liners. Might be cute once. Bothersome when it goes on the whole night. To a certain extent, Dave exacerbated this problem by responding to some of the calls, or by interacting with Bruce the superfan (“316 shows and counting!”), but I'm willing to grant him a bye there – the boss always gets to run the show anyway he wants!

As far as the performance goes, it was fun, if not quite up to the level I wanted. It was great to hear the first set's worth of Traffic classics, even if Dave decided not to play the nostalgia game, and rearranged a few of them so much as to be positively unrecognizable save for the familiar lyrics. When done well, this can be exciting, surprising and interesting. Done poorly, it comes off as yet another annoyance – just messing up a good thing for no good reason. Sadly, pretty much every case tilted towards the latter situation last night. Oh well. Guess I'm just packing too much baggage over how things ought to be done!

Second set consisted mainly of tunes written by Dave, with a smattering of covers tossed in for variety's sake. Given his long and fruitful career, this made for rewarding listening, though some of the tunes suffered from the same derangement issue that I complained about in regards to the Traffic tunes of the first set. Will I go see him again? Sure. Soon? All depends on the details, really, but I don't expect him to be back before next year…

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2014 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2014 event list! ☸ On to the next event!