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Clutch
Cleveland Agora
04-04-04
Reviewed by Mr. Lee
It was a crowded house at the Cleveland Agora for one
of the hardest working bands in Rock'n'Roll, Clutch. The evening started
off with The Bakerton Group opening up. For those unfamiliar, The Bakerton
Group is Clutch without Neil Fallon on vocals. In addition, they also have
a keyboard player sitting in with them on this tour(he also played during
the Clutch set.) They played their brand of heavy groove jazz-rock just
long enough to get the crowd, and themselves, warmed up for the coming
Clutch set.
This tour, the first since the release of their new
album, "Blast Tyrant", has been dubbed "An Evening with Clutch" and every
show is guaranteed to be at least two hours in length. Is there truth in
advertising? We shall see.
The band strolled onstage at 9:25pm and started off
with the first three songs off of "Blast Tyrant" before rolling into "Pure
Rock Fury." I must say that in the six times that I have seen Clutch live,
this is the best that they have ever sounded. Before starting into "Smoke
Banshee," the band said that they will be taking a 10 minute break before
starting into the second half of the show. After the song, they left at
10:25, one hour after starting!
Fallon, drummer Jean-Paul Gaster, bassist Dan Maines
and guitarist Tim Sult strolled back onto the stage twenty minutes
later(tardy!) and launched into "Who Wants To Rock?" Why they don't start
off every show with this great little ditty, I will never know.
During the course of the two sets, Clutch managed to
cover every album that they have released to date including the oft-ignored
"Jam Room." A concert of this length also insures that they will drag out
some songs that you don't get to hear often like, "Walking in the Great
Shining Path of Monster Trucks." They finished the second set at 11:40 and
then came out for 15 minutes of encore. That makes the show over the two
hours they promised!
Except for
a minor microphone glitch very early in the show, the performance was
flawless which, along with the $5.00 advance ticket price, made this evening
with Clutch one of the best concert performances I have seen in quite a
while. (Mr. Lee)
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