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Submitted By: Mark Ward
Date: 09/18/2002
If you've never been to Uncle Fester's it is exactly the kind of intimate bar you'd expect to find in a college town. Small stage with people basically right on top of the band. Bloomington is one fantastic college town, I know as I was a student there for four excellent years. Anyway, this bar didn't exist when I was a student so this was my first time being there and I really enjoyed this venue. I think it is a little rough on the band since the stage is small and they are a 6 piece band but they made it work just fine and played one of the best shows I've seen them play on this night in Bloomington.
My buddy Dave and I decided to make the trek from Chicago down to Bloomington to see them play and found out from the band that we at least hold a tie now for the record for travelling the furthest to see a Groovatron show. The first set started out smoking with an excellent Make Like A Tree. I'd never heard the band play this one live but this was a very tight number to start things off. Next came one of my favorite songs Shaunza Night Sky. This song starts with some very Deadesque grooves and combines the singing harmony more common to bands like Moe. and Phish but the essence of the tune is purely original. Anyway, this was one of the best versions I had heard the band play of this number. They had been on the road touring the south for quite awhile and they obviously gained alot of musical harmony on that trip as they were tighter sounder with more ambitious improvisation than I had ever seen from them.
The closing of the first set was also just plain awesome. Fire On The Mountain > Green followed by Triumphant Inferior absolutely smoked and got the crowd ready for what would be an unbelievable 2nd set. The crowd was quite good this evening at Uncle Fester's considering it was the end of summer and there are very few students in town at this time of year. Still, I think about 40-50 people showed up to see Groovatron play and none were disappointed I suspect.
The band came out and started the second set with the intent of jamming hard. Erotic and Outcome SOS, two numbers that provide for some of the best jamming the band does, were on fire tonight. I had never seen them play Erotic except as a set closer so I was quite surprised when it opened up this set. Fall into Cissy Strut was fantastic as well. There were some excellent jams during What You Are and Hey You as well. This set was the first time I heard the band cover Led Zeppelin's Good Times Bad Times and they brought a unique approach to this song with some very heavy rifts and excellent vocals. Hole In The Fish Tank is one of the best originals Groovatron has IMO. The reggae beat and Tony's vocals are so original and energetic you can't help but want to just groove to the beat. Bone Diggin was a smoking closer to close one of the best single sets I've seen from Groovatron. Then the band decided to go ahead with an encore and blew the roof off with The Meters cover of Funky Bitch. This absolutely smoked and the crowd, plenty inebriated by now (as was I), just loved it as Groovatron closed out an amazing performance.