Brotherhood of the Electric- Terrastock, The Showbox, Seattle, Nov. 3, 2000

by Vikki Anselmo


As mentioned in Jack Endino's email newsletter, Brotherhood of the Electric played the Terrastock Festival at the Showbox last night under the name Wellwater Conspiracy. I assume that when the festival was booked, the organizers and the band thought that Matt would be back from touring with Pearl Jam in time to play Terrastock. Since PJ was in Boise, ID last night, the rare Wellwater Conspiracy show became a Brotherhood of the Electric show without enough advance notice to change the Terrastock posters.

The Band:
Ben Shepherd - vocals
John McBain - guitar
Jack Endino - bass
Dan Peters - drums

The Setlist (since all the techs ignored my requests for the setlist, John McBain was nice enough to stop breaking down gear to hand it to me):
Farside
Thing in e
So Come On
You Do You
No Friend of Mine
Trowerchord (segue into) Lost Woman
Sleeveless
Girl from New York (Ben departs after this song)
Ladder to the Moon (extended version) (Jack takes over vocals and the band concludes the set with an awesome instrumental)

They put on a good show. It went something like this...
Ben smiled
Ben's mic died
Ben got pissed
Ben rocked out to assert his anger
Ben used Jack's mic
Ben smiled again
Ben tried unsuccessfully to fix the dead mic
Ben got pissed again
Ben rocked out some more
Ben used Jack's mic again
Ben smiled again
Ben asked the audience if we could hear the guitar - half of us said yes, the other half said no
Ben made a derogatory remark about the Rockrgrl Conference that's been in Seattle since Thursday and asked that the guitar be turned up (Note: This pissed me off. I've been attending the Rockrgrl Conference. One of the main reasons for the existence of Rockrgrl Magazine and the conference is because women in the music industry often run into men who stereotype them as 'unable to rock'.)
Wellwater of the Brotherhood concluded their set with a rocking instrumental.


BACK