Take a seat in the front row with...
Jump
Knitting Factory NYC 10/20/04
Review by: Erica Futterman
“This is the rare and ridiculous disease tour,” said Jump’s multi-instrumentalist Matthew Bivins, explaining how the band’s upright bassist, Jonathan Gray, was wearing sunglasses indoors because he had pink eye and how the band’s tour manager came down with a case of gout. “And other friends have rickets and scurvy,” he added. “Nah, I’m just kidding.”
But maybe he wasn’t entirely kidding. Jump’s fall tour was rare and ridiculous for another reason - the band opened up the set list for a show in Atlanta entirely to pre-requested fan submissions (soon to be released on iTunes), and followed suit for the majority of their set at New York City’s Knitting Factory. Early in the set lead singer Jay Clifford told the crowd, “At some point in the show we're going to take requests.” After being bombarded with premature shouts, he maintained his position with a laugh: “Like I said, at some point. You can take control much later.”
Before the requests
officially started, the band played several tracks from Between...,
including “Hold You Down,” “Rains In Asia” and the album’s second
single, “Mexico.” Full of energy and playing for a packed
crowd, it
was hard to tell whether the band or the audience was having more fun.
During “Magazine,” multi-instrumentalist Bivins (whose brother Evan is
the band’s drummer) repeatedly pushed cellist Ward Williams – who was
playing guitar – into the backstage area, much to Williams’ amusement.
Gray and Clifford laughed as they reminded the crowd Jump had a new album (Between the Dim and the Dark, out on Brash Music), because they knew a majority of the requests would be for older songs – and they were right. The first request was for a song the band confessed having forgotten how to play, “In the Kitchen,” yet managed to pull off with a little help from their fans. Clifford was attentive to the crowd’s choices, which reflected the band’s mix of catchy pop songs (led by Clifford’s unique voice) and sexual rap-rock (well, as rap as a band from Charleston, N.C. can get, led by Matthew Bivins’ vocal stylings).