This recording showcases the second gig of the 1999 Fugazi West Coast tour and harkens back to their one-off performance at the (Majestic) Ventura Theater, a venue in downtown Ventura, California, “minutes from the Valley and Santa Barbara.” The 1200 cap theater and a flanking office building are reported to have been designed by architect L. A. Smith, displaying a 1920’s Mission Style Architecture design once favored by architects of motion picture theaters.

The recording presents some 22 live tracks, culled from various albums, i.e. Furniture EP (1), End Hits (9), Red Medicine (4), In on the Kill Taker (2), Steady Diet of Nothing (2), Repeater (3), 3 Songs seveninch (1). Their earliest work, i.e. Margin Walker EP, and 7 Songs EP are not featured this time.

The set opens rather remarkably with Cassavetes, well at least the ending of the song, reportedly because the tape recorder was started late. Other audio discrepancies relate to volume drop-outs or inconsistencies in the right channel due to a “bad cable.” After Bed For The Scraping, the audio levels pretty much balance out, the mix being pitch-perfect for the remainder of the recording.

The performance is solid overall, with few mistakes dotted around the place. I feel that Joe in particular takes the cake here, laying down some nice lines on bass (cf. Long Division, Recap Modotti or Sweet and Low). My highlight probably is the nice and subtle version of Two Beats Off (w/ Summertime / The Place I Love tags) which rather unusually includes a handful of bass lines at the beginning of the song as well.

However, other than all things music, I find that the recording offers little more since there is not much else going on, the band appearing not in a particular good mood and banter being limited to Ian addressing the issue of crowd-surfing and someone messing about with some water.

Partial footage of this show (starting at Long Division) is available through YouTube.

Although the overall sound quality of this recording is quite good, it's some of the lines that Joe throws in on bass that strike me the most for some reason; Long Division, Recap Modotti and Sweet and Low especially can be mentioned in this regard. Also, note that this recording includes Furniture, which hadn't been played in a long time (based on the chronology of shows available so far, the previous live take of this song seems to date from 1989), and a very nice and subtle version of Two Beats Off. As to the aforementioned drop-outs, I think I didn't notice any after Blueprint. ..