Electric Chair, Electric Chair, Electric Chair...

To start off with: Pee-Pee at the Oriental Theater in Denver, CO:


There was a small stretch of history when Godspeed You! Black Emperor was the only God throughout the deep reaches of space and time. One day, God exploded, leaving behind it the planets, people, and musical instruments that people would, one day, learn to play on those planets. Those people and instruments came back together in many forms, bottleskup flenkenkenmike/1-speed bike, bakunin's bum, exhaust, fly pan am, et sans, set fire to flames, hrsta, molasses, esmerine, balai mécanique, 'gypt gore, sam shalabi, shalabi effect, black ox orkestar, the lonesome hanks, the mile ends ladies string auxiliary, valley of the giants, and, finally, A Silver Mt. Zion


A Silver Mt. Zion is the most prominent of the GY!BE side projects, followed not-so-closely by Fly Pan Am and 1-Speed Bike. I went into this live set (which was the first audio I'd ever heard from ASMZ) with a "oh good, more Godspeed material," which, in hindsight, was just wrong of me to do. While one can definitely tell these musicians were all in (or influenced by) GY!BE, one can also tell that they are all very much their own artists, now capable o doingf things that, in GY!BE, they were not able to do.

This does not, by any means, make ASMZ bad. They are incredible. Hear for yourself:

Band: A Silver Mt. Zion
Date: 2006-05-25
Venue: Le 4 Sans, Bordeaux, France

(Intro) (0:48 min)
Godbless Our Dead Marines (16:20 min)
Take These Hands and Throw Them in the River (9:01 min)
(anxiety) (2:06 min)
Teddy Roosevelt's Gun (13:52 min)
Horses In The Sky(7:56 min)
(disco song) (1:18 min)
Ring Them Bells (Freedom Has Come And Gone) (23:14 min)
Blind Blind Blind (14:24 min)
(repetition) (1:48 min)
One Million Die Just to Make this Sound (14:27 min)