Pointless jams might be my least favorite element of live rock concerts. I say that having seen around 20 Grateful Dead shows and both the Allman Brothers and Phish about a dozen times each, so don't write me off as some jam-band hater. I simply can't stand jamming for jamming's sake, the prime overindulgence of the Black Crowes' Friday night stopover at the Joint.
Improvisation has a time and place, provided the confluence of unrehearsed ideas results in more than murky sonic stew. Early in the performance, when the Crowes segued from "Jealous Again" into "Waiting Guilty" via a lush transitional piece featuring frontman Chris Robinson on acoustic guitar, it sounded deliberate and compelling. But most of the night's jams—and trust me, there were plenty—felt perfunctory and tedious, as if guitarists Marc Ford and Rich Robinson had preordained 10 minutes of noodling for "Thorn in My Pride," five more for "Soul Singing" and so on, without bothering to draw up any original ideas to fill those lengthy intervals.
The heavy, free-form sessions were more plodding than electrifying, relegating Chris Robinson to hand-clapping and goofy dancing and driving fully half the crowd to the exits for good during an intermission. One woman I encountered during the break lamented the Crowes' exhausting approach. "I brought some first-timers to this show," she said. "They kept asking me if the songs usually lasted this long."
I wasn't entirely new to the Crowes' live act, but it had been a good 10 years. I headed home Friday night wondering why they opted to transform from hard-hitting, Southern-rock throwbacks to lumbering jammers, relying on that most insipid of concert traditions, the 10-minute drum solo, and the wink-and-a-nod of a pair of Vegas-related covers (Gram Parsons' "Ooh Las Vegas" and the Rolling Stones' "Tumbling Dice") over the power of their own formidable catalog.