Banyan Live At Perkins Palace. Release Date : October 12, 2004. Label: Sanctuary. Rating: Andy doesn't dig rating stuff. Live at Perkins Palace... How clever for this sooper-groop that includes Stephen Perkins. From the gut of all these rock guys comes this big non-vocal spazzout jam session thing. It's got an interesting mix of elements, funky bassline, wanky guitar-god solos, freeform jazz trumpets.... I mean if I were at a show and some band just suddenly went into a ten minute random jamout session in the middle of a song to 'shake things up,' I'd probably be going wild for it. But as it stands, a whole album of instrumental jamouts kind of gets to me, no matter who's playing them and how much I should respect the fact that they have the free reign to pretty much do whatever they please. This is probably more suited to oldschool music geeks who revel in listening to how fast the drums can be played and how many lightly-exotic elements can be melded to the basic instruments. However the instruments are used very poetically and in a very story-telling manner. They convey emotions adequately. The opening song "Mad As A Hornet" sure does sound like irrational fury. Like Flight Of The Bumblebee part two. They certainly know how to play these things well, but yeah it's a basement bar jazz jam. Which is cool on a certain level. If I were in a basement bar, for example. It'd be fun to dance to and would make good environmental music. Song of choice : "Rocks A Fallin'" - super rich and interesting and full of african beats, tubby drums, weird sounds. Again, very jamout, but it has so many neat little emotions. -Andy Scheffler Elsewhere Banyan website Published : June, 2005.