3/15/91 The Gothic Theater - Sometimes shows have sloppiness, to varying degrees, that may affect how much you like a show. This show is something else entirely. Honest to god, it sounded to me like all four guys dropped acid before the show and were seeing their instruments as vicious animals they had to wrestle to the ground. It's not so much sloppiness, although there is some sloppiness, but more that, for the majority of the show, they are just not hooked up at all. At times, it sounds like they aren't even trying to play together, just wailing away at notes and phrases without regard for the song or what anyone else is doing.

The first set is all hyped up, frantic energy with zero control. Everything is messy and disorganized, particularly Stash and AC/DC Bag. Bag just sounds wrong. During the jam in Mike's Song, it sounds like they make a conscious effort to slow things down and get control, but it gets away again during Hydrogen. The first set, to me, is unequivocally bad. I was hopeful for the second set, but it again starts out shaky, and by the time we're through Horn, the show has achieved full train-wreck status. Trey announces Paul & Silas, then sounds like he starts Rocky Top, and no one else seems to know how to get it started, so they just kind of stumble into it. Cavern is rough, and the Destiny Unbound is simply awful.

I Didn't Know was apparently a good call, since it gave them a chance to just not play for a little bit. Even IDK gets downright weird at the end (at one point, a woman somewhere even lets out a full-on horror movie blood-curdling scream). Fortunately, though, something about I Didn't Know lets them pretty much get whatever it was out of their system, because the remainder of the show is fairly OK, though nothing spectacular. Harry Hood is probably the one song that had some highlights, although I was relieved to hear Coil played cleanly (even though there is pretty much no Page solo).

Overall, though, yikes. Don't know what the deal with this show is. I debated raising it up to two stars since the last four songs are at least OK, but I decided I would have needed something special to rescue the first 3/4 of the gig from whatever it was that had taken over the band on this night. I gotta go one star on this.