From a phrase to a full section
Taper’s Choice’s October 30 programme at Garcia’s in Chicago has three sets. At the end of the first, Vegan in the ’90s contains a brief tease of Phish’s Wolfman’s Brother. The quartet then dresses as Phish and turns to Radiohead. Everything in Its Right Place opens the second set; Motion Picture Soundtrack closes it. Between those points come Kid A, The National Anthem, How to Disappear Completely, Treefingers, Optimistic, In Limbo, Idioteque and Morning Bell. Ten works give the middle of the evening a defined repertoire.[1]
The scale of the programming changes here. A brief quotation inside one song gives way to an entire set reserved for another band’s works. Phish first appears through its music, then supplies the onstage disguise. Radiohead supplies the repertoire inside that disguise. The sequence makes a useful distinction between a passing reference and an extended selection of works. The musical interest lies in that change of scale: a reference to another band moves from a small sign within a song to a decision organizing a whole section of the concert.[1]
The closing return
Lick the Toad, Doner Wrap and California 99 appear in the third set. Taper’s Choice returns to its own songs, in a section Relix describes as heavy on improvisation. That final step gives the Radiohead selection a particular position: the quartet’s own works precede it and its own works follow it. The shape of the evening depends on accounting for that return. Reading the middle set alone leaves aside the opening and closing material that frames its place in the concert.[1]
I read this frame as a way of holding borrowed repertoire within the band’s own work. The listener encounters the quartet’s songs, enters a section devoted to another group’s writing and returns to the opening ensemble’s repertoire at the end. The same arrangement could also be the practical result of a Halloween game rather than a deliberate statement about musical identity. Sequence alone cannot settle the musicians’ intention. Its value as programming lies in marking the boundaries of those transitions for the listener: a brief reference, a ten-song section and a return. Repertoire gives the evening its form through those three steps.[1]