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interrupt the experience. You could hear the proverbial
pin drop in the silence that followed the refrain. Drums
kicked in, and the complex syncopations and playful
virtuosity focussed the collective awe of the audience
upon the fast moving extremities of the drummer. The
level of dexterity and mechanical rhythmic perfection
emanating from the drums were hard to fathom. We,
the audience, felt privileged to witness what distilled
perfection sounded like. Love, awe, and excitement built.
The audience grew into a Blake organism, rising and
falling with the movement of the music, compelled to
shift their bodies to match the rhythm of song. Blake was
like an alien at the controls in the skull of the collective,
controlling mood, movement, and function of the group
with mesmerizing, hypnotic precision. He led us to
experience what the afterlife must sound like.
The best moment of the show occurred when
the bass-pedal organ played by ‘Airhead’ purposefully
fluttered out of control. Deep guttural moans shook
my ribs and every atom of my body was thrown into
disequilibrium. I felt like I was Haida Gwaii and the Juan
de Fuca plate was subducting beneath my being. I was
shaking so hard, David Berman might poetically declare,
“It looked like there were two of [me].” The audience
resembled the Maxwell CDR man being blown back
by the sound. Visceral may be an overused adjective to
describe music, but th \