Beating the bootleggers at their own game,
Live at Field Stone
was recorded on Memorial Day 1997 at
the Field Stone Winery
in Healdsburg, CA by the simple expedient of attaching two lapel microphones to a DAT tape machine. The result could have been a mass of high-tech mud, but digitally remastered and tweaked for release, the seven songs here capture
Gary Duncan
's recycled
Quicksilver
sounding phenomenal, with lengthy explorations of
"Voodoo Boogie #1"
and
"Bubba Jeans"
and seething romps through
"Senor Blues"
"Gator Bait."
There are moments, to be sure, when you could wish for better separation between the instruments, but the disc still relays all the excitement and energy of the night, with the crowning glory arriving via a 15-minute frenzy through
Herbie Hancock
's
"Maiden Voyage."
A companion volume can be found in the form of
Live at Sweetwater
. Infuriatingly, it was pressed without any hard recording data beyond the track listing and lineup, but beyond noting the replacement of bassist
Bobby Vega
with
Jimmy Guyette
, this could be a continuation of the simultaneously released
CD, with "
Wide Laig,"
John Lee Hooker
"Bottle Up and Go,"
and a wonderful revision of
Marvin Gaye
"Inner City Blues"
joining regular
favorites
"Close Enuff 4 Jazz,"
"Senor Blues,"
"Maiden Voyage"
in the repertoire. The recording quality is a little scratchy, as seems to be the case with a lot of these releases, but the energy levels never falter, and
remains the visionary hero behind some of the most exquisitely realized jamming of the age. This may not be the sound of classic '60s
, but every band has to grow up sometime. ~ Dave Thompson