Written by: Dave Cantrell
Some albums sell themselves, don’t you think? And if you do agree, then this review is over because you already either have this epic double-LP Mike Watt jam-a-palooza recorded during the Minutemen/fireHOSE bassist’s monster tour of 1995 or you’re planning on getting it upon penalty of death. Because, frankly? If you’re not, and you consider yourself even a passing fan of the big man with the bass in his hands, then you’ve got a screw loose, buddy. But whatever, let’s move on.
“ring spiel” tour 95 immortalizes a particularly blazing stop on that glorious and trenchantly historic tour, recorded at the Metro in Chicago May 6th, the nineteenth show on a 31-date joyride from coast to coast. As to the lightning thunder power that characterizes this set, some quick history for context. Just nine and half years past the incomprehensibly tragic loss of D.Boon and but a small handful of months beyond the shuttering of Watt’s post-Minutemen, working class piston of a band fireHOSE, Watt released his solo album ball-hog or tugboat?, an effort that if nothing else – and there’s plenty; it’s a very fine record indeed – reflected the man’s standing in the pre-alternative punk rock community, as a literal who’s-who of musicians from an ungodly roll-call of by-now (and even then) legendary bands fell over themselves to help that album get made, members of Black Flag, Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth, the Meat Puppets, and Saccharine Trust among others crowded the studio in a gesture that landed somewhere between a genuflection and a backyard kegger. As to why this ragged royalty would gather ’round this modest – if ebullient – corndog from San Pedro, well, suffice to say there’s seldom been a man better matched to the implications of his last name. Add to that the deft instinctive virtuosic fury of Watt’s bass playing, to which the likes of Flea and countless others more or less owe their livelihoods, and one wonders how many blocks the queue of unused musicians hoping to lend their own helping hands to ball-hog must have snaked outside the studio door. All of which goes miles to explain why Eddie Vedder and Dave Grohl – the former drumming incognito in then-wife Beth Liebling’s Hovercraft and the latter fronting his fledgling band Foo Fighters to provide the “spiel tour” support – would drop whatever anything-else-they-could-be-doing for the opportunity to go out on the road with Watt in classic three-guys-in-a-van style, romping across America in what could have been seen, one supposes, as a sort of victory lap for these three punk rock dudes suddenly vaulted into the luminary mid-nineties spotlight (Live 105‘s had sprouted all over the land spewing Green Day and Jane’s Addiction to the mallrat masses in teenage rebellion’s desperate last stand) were it not for the fact that the tour was so righteously savage, breakneck, and pretension-crushing at every stop and turn. Especially, on the evidence here, in Chicago.
Just to put it bluntly, past the deceptively down-home Daniel Johnson cover “walking the cow” that opens the set, every subsequent track builds upon the previous into an overall, flat-out Holy shit! flambé of full-throated, bass-trampling rocknroll jubilation, the pedigree of all concerned – including ex-Germ/Nirvana guitarist Pat Smear and drummer William Goldsmith, both new Foo Fighters – blending together in wild confluence, crossed-together livewires sparking onstage in impassioned confirmation of the joy inherent in the original, untrammeled punk rock impulse, even as the songs themselves hew to the flanneled heart-on-the-sleeve progressivist chug that had defined Watt’s entire history up to that point.
“big train” chases its flailingly untamed tail all over and around its requisite – and massive – locomotive churn, Pat Smear’s slide work flashing around like a barrage of sheet lighting casting the thing’s momentum in sharp silhouette, Grohl behind the kit a blur of explosive precision (he’ll not cede the stool to Goldsmith until mid-set). With a quasar-like density meeting an unhinged propulsion, “against the 70’s” finds Watt and Vedder barely keeping up with themselves and doing it brilliantly, sharing vocals with a ‘Fuck physics!’ abandon. “drove up from pedro,” by design a more restrained proposition – and here’s where we mention that Watt’s one of the most effective autobiographical songwriters of his or any other generation and receive no quarrel – nonetheless busts out in its bust-out moments with thunderous immensity, Vedder besting himself on guitar madman-style. After smoothing the feather-flown premises for a bit with the semi-funky fireHOSE excursion “makin’ the freeway” and the mellow storm of ball-hog‘s “chinese firedrill,” Grohl out front now with a guitar in his hands – again, a novelty in 1995 (just wait until he shreds the shit out of Blue Öyster Cult’s “the red and the black” to close the set) – and Watt showing off with some nimble bass filigrees as if his fingers are dancing in the “Rain,” our mojo comes steaming back with mosh-worthy fervor, bashing through “piss-bottle man” – dedicated to Watt’s dad – Goldsmith now sitting where Grohl had just sat and proving the latter’s every match in terms of firepower though with perhaps a tad more percussive snap; carromming with jazz-thrashy authority through the Minutemen-(re)shaped “forever…one reporters opinion,” this one for Kira Roessler and sung primarily by Smear with a larynx-addled devotion, then segue-ing non-stop into “e-ticket ride,” Vedder chipping away on the guitar with some chicken-scratch rhythm playing that’ll have any Pearl Jam-based doubters (guilty) reappraising on the spot. In fact, on a record meant as much as anything to represent and preserve one of its era’s most rambunctiously thrilling moments – this is the first and only time this beautifully-recorded document has been offered in any form – it’s Vedder’s crucial guitar contributions that most surprise, as evidenced by the D.Boon-inspired riffery on “political song for michael jackson to sing” off Double Nickels as it twitches economically twixt homage and interpretation.
There’s naturally tons more to tell, about the songs, about the dynamics ricocheting like random bottle-rockets of glee between the five of them in whatever configuration – you can feel it anywhere you let the needle drop, this recklessly intimate camaraderie being embraced with a constant full-tilt lack of hesitation – about the energy of the room that speaks with poignant recollection to a by-default more hopeful rock’n’roll time when there wasn’t quite reason yet to fear the existentially challenging sweep of change just ahead around the digital corner. To be swamped in that giddy unforced optimism is alone worth the price of admission here – an especially necessary emotion right at this moment, I’d offer – but if the music and its performances are, by that iteration, to be considered a ‘bonus,’ well, it’s easily said that there’s never been a more momentous one.
