The Medicine Show In Its Entirety tour arrived in London to celebrate the 4 CD 40th Anniversary expanded edition of the band's masterpiece. The Garage was packed with the loyal fans like me, who have been seeing them play live since they first came to these shores in 1984 and a few younger fans.
When they came on we had the first surprise of the night, seeing that the bands legendary drummer Dennis Duck had gone AWOL, for undisclosed reasons he missed the UK leg of the European tour, but being a well prepared band, they looked to the subs bench and persuaded Linda Pitmon from Zuzu's Petals and the Baseball Project et al to step up to the plate for the three UK shows. Steve Wynn announced that the first set was going to be 21st Century Dream Syndicate material and the second set would be The Medicine Show.
The first set opened with Where I'll Stand from the Ultraviolent Battle Hymns and from the get-go they were in the pocket, with Jason Victor's lead guitar drawing us in. Filter Me Through You had a louche playful edge and the first time for the evening that Mark Walton's bass came to the fore, when he started doing amazing things on the top two strings and Linda had seamlessly fit right in the groove. Out Of My Head has some great spaced out guitar interplay between Steve and Jason, Chris Cacavas keyboards added too perfectly while having a nicely stoned feel to things.
Black Light from These Times is feeling more like an anthem for our times and has become more expansive, with the band swapping glances, they all did there best to add to the song. Like Mary saw Jason Victor totally fry with his slide guitar going totally spectral against Chris' piano part. They then revved up the motor for a cruise down 80 West like speed cameras didn't exist, Linda's drums had loads of groove, while it was hard to keep your eyes off what Mark was doing on Bass, it was far more than just rhythm full of soul in the propulsive engine of the band.
How Did I Find Myself Here is one of those songs that takes on a life of its own live, this version had some immense peaks, Jason and Steve seemed to draw the best from each other, the onstage intuition, they jammed and took us all on a trip. The first set closed with Glide that had loads of the audience singing along sounding monstrously great. The first set had gone down a storm.
After the break they returned and Steve told us that they would be playing all of the Medicine Show but not in the correct order, with them launching into album opener Still Holding On To You with Chris' keyboards more upfront than in the first set, they then diverged from the running order with Bullet With My Name On It a song that seems rather prescient currently, although Steve's central character may have done more to deserve the bullet than is nowadays commonplace, this had a nice frayed around the edges feel.
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Daddy's Girl was all about Jason's guitar and how Mark was twisting his top strings to this dark twisted song that we all sang along with. Burn was totally incendiary guitars and Linda's pinpoint drumming this was totally driven. Burn had some wicked keyboards and by this point Chris kept standing up to whip us all up into a frenzy, while the arsonist did his thing in the wheatfield again.
They then took us on a long slow ride down to The Medicine Show once more, Steve's vocals sounding like the carnival barker turned showman that would get us all drinking that elixir they were pushing one intense guitar solo at a time.
The first half of Armed With An Empty Gun was played without guitars as Mark, Chris and Linda built the tension, it was unclear if the empty gun was holstered or not, but I'd be careful playing games with an empty gun nowadays, it was far less dangerous to do so in the 80's, when the guitars did come in the tension was ready to explode, Steve's vocals getting angrier and more desperate. They fluffed the intro to Merrittville and had to start again, with Jason's guitar solo seeming to get faster and faster his hand a blur it was magnificent. Steve then introduced the only song from the album left by telling us all the names The John Coltrane Stereo Blues had been known by, from Open Hour onwards before they opened up the monster riff and jammed like crazy this had the normal false endings and that pause that seemed to last about 30 seconds of them all stood statue like before it all came back in and eventually mutated into Morning Dew with them bringing things careening to halt and the audience erupting cheering for more.
They came back for an encore that opened with Chris playing a solo that drifted into Tell Me When It's Over as the rest of the band joined in to everyone's delight. That's What You Always Say was properly frantic with Linda having a real muscular edge, before they closed with a rip snorting run through The Days Of Wine And Roses that let Jason and Steve do battle on guitar one last time and to leave everyone at the Garage totally happy and still wanting more with The Dream Syndicate still very much on fire and of course on Fire Records.
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