[rating=4.00]
Mulennium is the first archival project ever released by Gov’t Mule, accurately timed for debut in the general time-frame of the loss of bassist Allen Woody a decade ago. Recorded at the cusp of the millennium on New Year’s Eve 1999-2000, this triple-disc package sounds (splendid) and looks like a blueprint for the band’s music throughout what is now a redoubtable sixteen year stint on the road and in the recording studio.
This complete show of Gov’t Mule’s appearance as the Roxy Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia may or may not have been designed to accentuate the groups’ scope and strength, but that’s the function it serves with ten year’s hindsight. Staples of their repertoire book-end the three hours plus of playing in the form of originals like “Bad Little Doggie” and “Blind Man in the Dark,” much as those two numbers have opened and closed Mule performances for the duration of their existence.
Covers of other artists’ material has been almost as reliable a component of their sets and Mulennium contains one of the most durable: Humble Pie’s “30 Days in the Hole.” The Mule still offer the cacophonous likes of The Beatles’ “Helter Skelter,” as well while their wry take on Alice Cooper’s “Is It My Body,” sounds as knowing then as it does now. The bleak prophecies of Y2K made the inclusion of King Crimson’s “21st Century Schizoid Man” wholly appropriate and Led Zeppelin’s “Dazed and Confused” equally bone-crushing.
The erstwhile guitarist from The Black Crowes at the time Audley Freed contributes guitar to expand the Mule sound, so it makes sense to play that band’s “Sometimes Salvation.” But Freed is only one of the sit-ins on Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Simple Man,” where members of Blueground Undergrass, the show-opener’s for the night, weigh in with even more guitars, including pedal steel, to authenticate the arrangements.
Yet even the melodramatic likes of Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released,” as the evening’s closer, can’t compare to the emotional peaks of the mid-set appearance of bluesman Little Milton. Gov’t Mule have regularly played the blues during their lifetime, but have rarely relegated themselves as thoroughly to a backup role as do Warren Haynes, Matt Abts and Woody this night. But it’s a measure of their generosity of spirit, not to mention their intuitive gasp of the blues that, for close to an hour, they become accompanists as redoubtable as the man they’re supporting on numbers including “I Can’t Quit You Baby” and “It Hurts Me Too.”
This second disc of Mulennium is thus as listenable on its own as in the context of the three-cd set. Likewise, the first and third disc offer an accurate take on a band that’s traversed more ground in its lifetime than many artists do in twice as many years.
