Review: ‘Butte-a-Palooza’ en force as UM and P4 light up lives and the stage
Aug 05, 2019 02:50PM ● By Jennifer J JohnsonBaltimore’s Pigeons Playing Ping Pong were dressed like much of the audience—loungewear, bare feet and tie- dye. (Jennifer J. Johnson/City Journals)
By Jennifer J. Johnson | [email protected]
Nightclubs often advertise Ladies Night or ’80’s Night. The 2019 Red Butte Garden Outdoor Concert Series needed no such messaging for a huge millennial audience to come out for a night of superb musicality and techno-wizardry for the pairing of Umphreys McGee and Pigeons Playing Ping Pong.
With a backdrop that, at times, offsets serene folk, provocative indie-acoustic—or most recently—gospel, the night UM and P4 took the stage, the venue felt significantly different than it had all season—Butte-a-Palooza, anyone?
When the opening band sports PJs and bare feet? You know you’re at Butte-a-Palooza
It was 96 degrees. P4 took the stage with the appropriate “Walk Outside” (2016).
One member of the band was barefooted and wearing tie-dye.
Proudly notorious Greg “Scrambled” Ormont looked like he just woke up in a college dorm room not more than a yell away at the University of Utah.
It was hard to determine who was hippier or happier amongst the band.
And, truly, the concept of competition likely does not enter these guys’ minds. These guys who exude the joy of music and music-making at every seemingly possible stage moment.
They looked like many in the crowd and piqued the already-exuberant, festival-like atmosphere, complete with beach-ball bumping and, of course, ping-pong balls aplenty.
Scrambled lives up to epic album images of him split-leaping in tie dye and tutus. His movements range from funky chicken to yoga asana to a cross between Gene Kelly and Peter Griffin flick-kicking. The musical genre is intuitive: funk jam or as Scrambled puts it, “high-energy psychedelic funk.”
P4 played seven songs. Song No. 3, “Poseidon” (2017) performed with Jake Cinninger, one of UM’s two lead guitarists, had the kind of energy bands reserve for encores.
Near end of set, the band amped the energy even higher with “The Liquid.” The song somehow transformed the outdoors venue into a smoky blues club, progressing to über-fast guitar licks.
P4 wrapped the set with perhaps their best known number—“Julia” (2014), where the band’s zany, rif-timed choreography added to the fest zest.
UM…. But the kind of ‘um’ that is never a pause
P4 warmed up an audience that already microwaves itself, then keeps it on burnt-marshmallow, before, during, and after Umphreys McGee hits the stage.
Up close, though, the guys’ musical perfectionism comes off a bit cranky in the early numbers. Lots of foot-pedal fiddling and knowing, grimacing looks amongst each other as real-time musical magic competes with the focus on technicality.
The show is loud and technical—which, by its nature, speaks to, sings to a younger crowd. The speaking-singing-electrifying rages into the night. UM does an amazing two sets, on top of P4’s set, attempting to vet the energy from the crowd, but instead, continuing to feed it and be fed by it.
Again, Butte-a-Palooza.
A fan on Red Butte’s page even suggests they, next time (a given), schedule UM for back-to-back gigs. The unique fan experience, after all, is a big part of what makes this band legendary—part of its assuming the mantle to carry the torch for Grateful Deadheads seeking more than music—but an experiential outing.
CSN is heard, when the band performs an inspired “Uncle Wally” (2002). Intense solos and instrumentals flavor “In the Kitchen” (2014). The first set ends on a climax with “In the Black” (2015). All over the map—musically and time-zone dimensionally.
The second set channels Talking Heads and Pink Floyd, as UM performs with marathon, high-flying energy, loud sound and loud lyrics. It is alternative metal, raging at Red Butte, with dizzying picking and psychedelic lights.
“The Silent Type” (2018) echoes Jet’s “Are You Gonna Be My Girl” (2018), but makes that song seem like an early life form of a more evolved being (e.g. Eohippus to today’s horse), mixing complex sounds as liberally as they do lights fantastic.
The crowd, as if part of a timed rif, goes, even crazier when UM fires up its rendition of the memorialized Frankie Goes to Hollywood (RIP, 2007) “Relax.” George Orwell could have never imagined such an embellished 1984.
Also worth noting? UM’s “The Linear” (2014). And so on, and so on, and so on.
Butte-a-Palooza 2019 left a lasting impression—for the young, and even not-so-young at Red Butte Amphitheatre.