Setlist at The Call Providence, RI on 9/15/1998
Set One
Set Two
Stream this show and the entire The Disco Biscuits catalog
Setlist at The Call Providence, RI on 9/15/1998
Set One
Set Two
Show Notes
(Recording note: The beginning Boogie Stop Shuffle is missing. Some noise issues from Marc's bass during Helicopters jam.)
"Most concerts you remember because of what you experienced inside the venue. I’ll never forget this one because of what happened outside.
It was a Tuesday night in September 1998. The Disco Biscuits rolled through Providence, RI on their fall tour of the Northeast, pulling into The Call for a show in front of a crowd of around sixty. A group of college kids from nearby Brown University showed up to the door and got turned away by a bouncer. Wrong age, wrong night, wrong luck. They should have gone home, packed a bowl, and licked their wounds while listening to a Phish tape. Excuse me, we should have gone home.
But we didn't.
Instead, we pressed up against the front windows of The Call and watched through the glass as the band tore through a first set that included jazz standards, weirdo originals, and the third-ever performance of what would become The Disco Biscuits’ signature song, Helicopters. The sound bled through the walls. The sightlines were perfect. We danced on the pavement. At some point, the band noticed, and started making faces back at us.
When set break came, Marc Brownstein and FOH engineer Jon "Jonald" Lesser emerged from the club and joined us on the sidewalk. They razzed us for not having fake IDs. They tried and failed to talk the bouncer into letting us in. They shared a blunt and laughed themselves hoarse when I suggested that the second set would be the “blunted” set. “Every Biscuits set is the blunted set,” Marc assured me. I explained to the guys that I was hearing their music for the first time that night, and didn’t own a single Biscuits tape. Marc called over a wiry, sweat-soaked, bald guy named Tom C and told him to fix that.
Then they went back inside and played set two.
To the growing annoyance of the doorman, we stayed. We danced on the sidewalk through the whole second set. Before the night was over, the band had dedicated three songs to us, including a rare performance of the surprisingly heartfelt love song Ida Fith (I Didn't Ask for It to Happen), its second and final full-band outing. I’ve been chasing that song for 28 years now.
Tom C kept his promise. The tapes arrived. I played them until they wore out, and traded them for any Biscuits’ shows I could get my hands on. Within weeks, I was roaming the I-95 corridor to catch the band wherever I could. By New Year's Eve, I was in Philadelphia watching the band debut their first rock opera, The Hot Air Balloon, in front of a crowd that included my Providence crew, Tom C, and many of the faces I’d first seen through a window on that Tuesday night in September.
After the show, the band invited the entire audience back to their house, where we kept the party going until well into January 1st. At one point Marc introduced me to the whole party with the story of how we met that night outside The Call. I was proud to be the kid who fell so hard for the Biscuits that he didn’t even flinch at spending his entire first show on the sidewalk outside the venue.
Tom C's soundboard recording from The Call captures a snapshot of a young band in the middle of becoming something extraordinary. Helicopters was unlike anything the jamband world had heard before. The Hot Air Balloon was being quietly assembled in setlists across the country. And more established songs like I-Man were producing “best-ever” versions every time they were played. The Disco Biscuits in the fall of 1998 were poised to make an evolutionary leap, and this recording catches them mid-flight.
You didn't have to be inside the venue to feel it. Trust me on that one." - Max Dawson
