Mountain View, CA 9/3/95 concert review 

 Black Crowes
 HORDE concert review
 Sunday September 3, 1995
 Shoreline Ampitheatre, Mountain View, CA
 by Doug Fierro

  Saw the Black Crowes Sunday night 9/3 at the Shoreline Amphitheatre.
Unfortunately Taller has disappointed Northern California Crowes fans
once again by providing horrible seats.  For the Greek Theatre show
in Berkeley last time, the Taller tickets were binocular-distance from
the stage.  Then at the Shoreline, some Taller fans were placed in excess
of 20 rows back and to make it even worse it was as far right of stage
as you could get.  I could have gotten better tickets by waiting to
buy them when they went on sale opening day.  You would think that
Taller would try and keep all the fanclub members in close proximity,
but apparently that is not the case.  And for submitting my request
for tickets months in advance and following the Taller rules, I end
up with worse tickets than what a random ticket scalper could have
provided!  Oh well.

  Now on to the show...

  To start things off, I want to dispel some of these writings I've
seen implying that there is some sort of friction between John Popper's
band and the Black Crowes.  Nothing could be further from the truth,
and in fact Chris and John embraced each other several times, and
John did the same with Marc Ford once.  The fact is that these bands
have known each other for several years and they get along well.
Also the crowd was pretty well-behaved- no lectures from Chris to
respect thy neighbor directed at the masses.  In fact Chris didn't 
really talk much to the crowd at all- a far cry when the boys came
through to play Concord, CA in November of '92 and Chris berated
some people relaxing in the front section by telling them "Why don't
leave and give your tickets to a real fan in the back?"  Or when he
would stop a show to tell the people in the front to step back or stop
fighting.

  The Crowes played a pretty mellow show until the end- they did not
play songs like "Sting Me" or "Stare It Cold" like they did in LA the
day before, instead of opting for a long intro jam to "My Morning Song",
and then from there proceeding to a little ditty from their first
album titled "Thick N Thin".  I know there were some people around 
where I was sitting who did not seem to recognize it as a Black Crowes
song.  By the end of the night the Crowes had played four songs from
their debut album "Shake Your Moneymaker"- good news if you like
the older music.  If you just got hooked by the Crowes recently
with their latest album "Amorica", then the only song you might have
heard before is "High Head Blues".

  I've heard more than one fan say that the Crowes performances on
this tour were "non-spectacular" or somewhat less than expectations.
I have a few ideas why this might be the case, especially at the
Shoreline.  One is that for a show like the HORDE, fans are there
not just to see the Crowes exclusively.  Now if you are in the
first 10 rows with all the other hard-core Crowes fans, you might
not notice it, but being that Taller stuck me not far from the
lower entrance to the theatre, I could get a more overall view
of the show (and believe me, there were quite a few people in
front of me unfortunately!).  So your perspective of the show
will be a factor.

  Keeping this in mind, the Crowes played a lot of songs that
most mainstream music fans have simply never heard before.  Most
of these songs were not Crowes songs, but in fact performances
in conjunction with other bands playing at the HORDE show.
The Crowes are nice guys for letting all these bands jam with
them, but each time a band comes on stage for a guest jam,
it takes time to set up, plug in, etc.  You lose momentum of
the show and the crowd becomes somewhat disengaged.  They
did this on four songs, so when your setlist 10 songs or so,
about half the time you are waiting for people to march on and
off the stage with equipment.

  Also the Crowes seemed a little too jam-happy.  Maybe it was
in the spirit of the passing of Jerry Garcia and playing in
the Bay Area, but when they turned "Hard To Handle" into
a jam, that was stretching things a bit too much there.
They already have a group of songs they usually work an extended jam
into when performing live.  It is too bad they took a great
crowd-pleaser like "Hard To Handle" and effectively emascualted it.
And then from there they put quite a few people in their seats
when they waited for members of Wilco to come on stage and perform
a less-than-inspiring rendition of Gram Parson's "She".
Chris was in a very good mood that evening, but it is important
that the band not become too self-absorbed and forget that
they are there to entertain the fans- all the fans.  In
this respect, I think Blues Traveler actually up-staged the
Crowes a bit performance-wise because their set was tight 
and strong and fast-moving: they opened up with a big crowd-pleaser
and even played a couple of songs that were oldies that everyone
knew("Low Rider" and "Gloria").  And they managed to rotate their
"top 40" song in that happens to be quite popular now.  That is the
way you get a crowd going- get them into the show early, and keep
the momentum going- and I commend John Popper and his band for
doing a very good job at *entertaining* the crowd as well as performing.

The Crowes unfortunately had to do a come-from-behind in the
fourth quarter to get the Ampitheatre patrons back into it by
rebounding from a somewhat-boring cover of "She" with Wilco
into firing up with Rich's opening riff for "Jealous Again"
and carrying that into "Remedy" with an incredible drum solo
and then a great encore presentation of "Happy" with John Popper
and his crew, Ziggy Marley and his Melody Makers, and members of Wilco.
The very end of the Crowes set is how I remember them when they
were young and hungry- always pushing the envelope and creating
energy when none seemed present.  I don't think anyone here is
going to accuse me of not being a Black Crowes fan, so I'm pretty
comfortable in saying that I thought the Crowes' show seemed to drag
until the very end.  And this is from someone who has a very biased
positive view of the band.  I think the Crowes really enjoyed themselves
on this tour, but the show at the Shoreline was not the best show
the Crowes have done in the Bay Area- not by a long shot.  In fact,
when seeing the HORDE show last year, the headlining band then was
The Allman Brothers and they did an excellent show and even had
the Crowes on-stage for a guest performance.  The Allmans were
(and still are) a very polished band and they had their act down solid.
In comparing this year's headliner band for the HORDE to last year's, the
Crowes didn't quite match up.  They still have a lot to learn in this
respect.  But I do not doubt that I will see some more great performances
from the Crowes in the future, and I will always enjoy any Crowes show
that I can attend, but their performance at the Shoreline September 3rd
should have been reserved for a Blessed Chloroform crowd instead where
they can experiment and try some things that are not part of their
standard show (like having three different bands come up and perform
three different times).

  It was nice to see Rich sing some lyrics on the encore performance
of "Happy" by the Rolling Stones.  I think the band was truly happy
that evening, and it was the last show on the HORDE tour, so it
was a nice way for all bands involved to close things up.  I am
however definitely looking forward to a Crowes tour soon that is
all Crowes!

  Doug