This past weekend, the Disco Biscuits joined the Double Digit Club at the legendary Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, performing three nights at the hallowed venue, bringing their total to eleven shows in all here. The whirlwind three nights of music featured some of the band’s most beloved songs meshed with some bustouts and first timers that all led to an incredible weekend of music at The Cap.
The Biscuits came shooting out of the gate on Thursday night, thanks to a dusted off “Chemical Warfare Brigade,” the first one in more than six years. Another opening set highlight was a “House Dog Party Favor” that went delightfully dark and deep at times, surpassing the 20-minute mark. The set came to an end in vintage Disco Biscuits fashion with a “Story Of The World” > “Munchkin Invasion” > “Story Of The World” sequence, although “Munchkin” went unfinished and would surprisingly remain that way the entire run.
The band kept the old school hits coming with a “Hot Air Balloon” second set opener that also went unfinished, and instead morphed right into a thunderous “Shem-Rah Boo.” Emerging from “Shem,” drummer Allen Aucoin put on a drumming masterclass with the rare inverted approach to “Portal To An Empty Head.” It would be the first of many memorable song inversions this run, where a song’s ending is played immediately before its beginning.
Friday night brought with it a calendar page turn into April and all the potential for mayhem that comes along with April Fool’s Day. To that degree, a “Nughuffer” opener came as somewhat of a surprise, even admitted so by bassist Marc Brownstein in his traditional mid-song banter. But after a quick trip to Zex Sea, the Biscuits were off and running with another monster trance-fueled jam to start the show. An unfinished “Spaga” then later bled right into one of the band’s newer efforts, “Running Into The Night.”
The second set began with a mesmerizing drawn out jam that served as the runway for the intro to “Run Like Hell,” one of the band’s singature cover selections. This gave way to a parade of song inversions, starting with a very common one in “Confrontation.” A couple of inverted animals then followed suit in standout takes of “Crickets” and “Aquatic Ape” before “Basis For A Day” closed out the set in grand fashion. As an encore, the Disco Biscuits trotted out “Friend Like Steve” one more, a recently-penned birthday song for a friend of the band. Doubling down on the “FLS” songs, the band then unleashed a surprising first time ever cover of the Grateful Dead’s “Feel Like A Stranger.”
After two nights of barn-burners, Saturday took the Biscuits legacy at the Cap to a new level. With a fan written setlist once again guiding the band, tonight’s show was a true hallmark of the weekend and raised an already elevated bar even higher.
The band came out swinging in Set 1 with “Denmark Massive,” a song not played since 2008, and originally written by The Join (Marc Brownstein, Aron Magner, and The New Deal’s Jamie Shields and Darren Shearer), as noted by Zachary Franck. The Biscuits first studio single in a decade, “Lake Shore Drive” segued cleanly from “Denmark Massive” and into an inverted “Morph Dusseldorf.” The moment the audience heard the shift into the “Morph” ending, the room lit up with energy and peaked as the band and crowd sang in unison “Morph, morph from Dusseldorf, changing all the time, and if you stay the same one day, that night will be sublime.” The moment built on that peak by segueing into the beginning of “Morph,” a none-too often occurance.
A combination of “And the Ladies Were the Rest of the Night” with a potent “Cyclone” sandwiched inside would follow, a dream setlist and nothing short of creative and challenging for the Disco Biscuits.
“Vassillios” kicked off the second set, with neither the band nor crowd losing steam during setbreak. The eventual shift into the foreboding and evil vibe of “Orch Theme” took no prisoners and laid the groundwork for a Club Bisco vibe that reigned through the rest of the night. With the doors swung open, an inverted “Sweating Bullets,” the first ever such version, burst through for 25 minutes of peaks upon peaks that built with each successive ascent. Barber and Brownstein were found hopping around and getting down on stage, pairing well with the audience, creating a pure rock and roll moment, in the Original Rock Palace, naturally.
An equally dominant “Tempest” arrived out of “Sweating Bullets” and back into the second half of “Vassillios,” bringing the set nearly full circle. Shifting into the ending of “I Remember When,” the audience was elated in unison, singing along, a reflection on the 3 years (with two cancellations) that it has taken the Disco Biscuits to return to the Capitol Theatre stage.
Prior to the encore, Peter Shapiro, owner of the Cap, came out to reflect on hearing the Disco Biscuits for the first time in 1997 at The Wetlands, and led the crowd in singing Happy Birthday to Jon “The Barber” Gutwillig. Marc Brownstein then gave recognition to faithful longtime Tour Manager, Ryan Noel, who was spending his last run with the band this weekend, bidding him a farewell with the crowd pouring out love.
Perhaps reflecting on those sentiments, the band returned to the beginning of “I Remember When” to start the encore before shifting into Walter Murphy’s “A Fifth of Beethoven,” a final dose of disco for the night, one etched into Disco Biscuits and Capitol Theatre lore.
Disco Biscuits Capitol Theatre 2022 Setlists
Thursday, March 31
Set 1: Chemical Warfare Brigade* > Once the Fiddler Paid, House Dog Party Favor, Story of the World > Munchkin Invasion* > Story of the World
Set 2: Hot Air Balloon* > Shem-Rah Boo > Portal to an Empty Head^ > The Great Abyss > Shem-Rah Boo
Encore: Home Again
* unfinished
^ inverted
Friday, April 1
Set 1: Nughuffer > Spaga* > Running Into the Night > Aceetobee* > Rock Candy
Set 2: Run Like Hell* > Confrontation^ > Crickets^ > Aquatic Ape^ > Basis for a Day
Encore: Friend Like Steve, Feel Like a Stranger&
* unfinished
^ inverted
& debut
Saturday, April 2
Set 1: Denmark Massive* > Lake Shore Drive > Morph Dusseldorf^ > And the Ladies Were the Rest of the Night > Cyclone > And the Ladies Were the Rest of the Night
Set 2: Vassillios > Orch Theme > Sweating Bullets% > Tempest > Vassillios > I Remember When&
Encore: I Remember When&, A Fifth of Beethoven$
* last played 6/9/08 (548 shows)
^ inverted
% last played 1/31/19 (103 shows); first ever inverted version
& dyslexic
$ last played 11/3/18 (119 shows)
Photos by Em Walis
