North Star Bar Philadelphia, PA: August 25, 2002
This a great example of the band having fun outside their hometown of Chicago. They talk a lot on mic, with lots of funny banter, especially from drummer Mike Mirro. Being from Philly I can personally relate to being excited about Philly cheesesteaks – now that I’m in Colorado I hardly get a real cheesesteak, ever.
North Star Bar closed after 35 years in 2015.
Notable:
Cool jam to start the show, as was common in this era. Right into Ringo.
Before Walletsworth, Brendan says “this is a fun song.” And Joel says “Brendan is a fun guy.” Fungi joke?
Mike makes some jokes during banter, about Philly, saying they had cheesesteaks today. “Five of us in the band here had the Philly cheesesteak, Joel here had the Philly tube steak, I don’t know Joel was that any good?” Joel says “ we are staying at the Best Western and Mike’s going to be doing a standup set later I think starting around 1 AM“ Brendan asks if anyone else is hung over, and says this next one is for you, referring to Example one.
Example 1 into one vocal verse of Flying by the Beatles during the jam, ending with BB Blackbird tease, back into Example 1. Flying by The Beatles, played just 34 times, interestingly most recently played on the same night as the Whistle Kids debut on 1-12-2018 at the Taft in Cinncinnati.
After Space Funk Booty, Mike says “that’s called squonk rock.” Joel introduces Adam Budney on the lights, Don Richards back at merch, and Vince Inwinski, “the glue.”
Mike seems to take a request from the crowd and says “all in time? Yes we can do that one.“ And then right before they start playing the next song Jake says “this one’s called divisions“ but they play all in time. This All in Time has the interesting jazzy written start before going into the two guitars part that starts the song today. It has a written rhythm and short build-up section that they’ve now chosen to eliminate from modern versions.
Set 2: Two minute warmup jam leading into The Haunt. Nice build and transition into Led Zeppelin’s The Song Remains the Same.
Uncommon – Brendan: “This is a new one, we need a name…let us know what you think.” This is the third performance. The debut was a few days ago on 8-21-2002 at The Middle East in Cambridge, MA, but I can’t find recordings of the debut or the second performance in NYC.
After Uncommon there’s a funny set of banter where they joke about the names of songs and and something like “this next song is called stink fuck and that’s for all the moms out there.” Then someone remembers that they noticed a guy with the Def Leppard Hysteria shirt on earlier and he thought for sure he would come see them tonight but no one seems to think he’s there, and then Jake starts playing Hysteria with a small tease. It’s pretty entertaining banter.
Soul Food 1 has a Ryan bassline into a full band 5- minute jam, that morphs into the piano intro to Orfeo. It’s a great full band Orfeo, with a nice build right into the new jazz number Last Call, which is a Mike Mirro vocal tune they played 37 times in 2002. They brought it back only once since then in 2014, on NYE at the Tabernacle in Atlanta, with Mad Dog on trumpet and his horns, the Filthy Little Secret. Mike had passed earlier in the year and Brendan has the crowd chant during the 2014 Last Call, back and forth between the sides of the room, “bring out the booty wax, it’s New Years Eve,” which he had dedicated to Mike, saying “alright let’s do this for Mike.”
Last Call is a song with complex rhythms and tight playing with the band and the drummer. Joel has been quoted about Mike, “Musically, I think he was the backbone of us playing mixed meter and polyrhythm. We had a lot of fun writing sections of music together and trying to do things a little different from what was being produced then…when I met him, he was an incredibly accomplished drummer, but when we worked together, we talked a lot about musical theory and composition.” [from Wikipedia]
In 2002, Nothing Too Fancy comes in hot after Last Call.
Then a great The Crooked One to end the second set.
Joel comes out before the encore to ask if anyone has seen the Blues Brothers, and says that the last time they played Philly, they actually owed the bar money, like in the movie. (It’s early enough in their career that it’s feasible this is true.) He jokes that he’s glad that didn’t happen this time, Brendan says he just jinxed it.
A non-jammed Anchor Drops starts the encore, and then they finish Nothing Too Fancy, in classic Umph style.
Setlist from allthings.umphreys.com
Set 1:
Intro > Ringo, Walletsworth, Tribute to the Spinal Shaft > The Fuzz, Example 1 > Flying[1] > Example 1, Space Funk Booty, All In Time
Set 2:
Intro[2] > The Haunt > The Song Remains the Same, Uncommon, Soul Food I[3] > Orfeo, Last Call, Nothing Too Fancy > The Crooked One
Encore:
Anchor Drops > Nothing Too Fancy
Footnotes:
[1] ended with Blackbird (The Beatles) tease
[2] without Joel
[3] with Batman Theme (Neal Hefti) tease and quote
Show Notes:
with Hysteria (Def Leppard) tease and quote before and tease after Uncommon
Links to Audio
The Live Music Archive app (iOS) and the Taper’s Section app (Android) is a great way to find and listen to these shows. You can stream, download for offline listening, save favorites, and mark shows as already listened to. The app pulls all data directly from the public repository of live music recordings posted at archive.org.
