Remembering Benjamin Curtis: The Secret Machines At Bonnaroo 2005

Today marks three years since the passing of Benjamin Curtis, guitarist and founding member of both School of Seven Bells and The Secret Machines. Curtis abruptly left the latter act to form the former and while both projects received heaps of critical acclaim, it was his work with The Secret Machines that initially earned him a special place in the heart of live music lovers.

Curtis announced in February of 2013 that he’d been diagnosed with T-Cell Lymphoblastic Lymphoma and by years end the disease took his life at the age of 35. Although his journey was tragically cut short, he was gifted enough to leave behind a musical legacy that knows no end. In honor of Curtis’ life and in memory of his passing, we’re sharing a full audio recording of The Secret Machine’s performance at Bonnaroo in 2005.

One of the first high profile gigs The Secret Machines had was this late night Bonnaroo set that started after a headlining performance from Widespread Panic. Amongst TSM faithful this is considered to be one of the best show they ever performed as well as one of the best concert recordings out there. Some spacey warm up music segues into a delay-heavy guitar intro that demonstrates Curtis’ innovative nature and from there a singular strike of the bass accompanied by some hard hit cymbals causes a ferocious crowd reaction you can hear on the recording that will send shivers up your spine.

Songs like “I Hate Pretending,” “Faded Lines,” and “Lightning Blue Eyes” were performed at this show and all wound up on their sophomore release, Ten Silver Drops, but in addition to songs new and old, this set featured an array of covers by acts like Bob Dylan and Barrett Strong, as well as Neu!, a krautrock act that heavily influenced TSM.

The two song encore of “First Wave Intact” followed by “Nowhere Again” is the highlight of the performance and the latter is as passionate and powerful a take on the song as they’d ever performed. It’s not the best way to listen to a concert recording, but the first and last tracks from this show give as accurate a portrayal of the TSM live experience as you can have in 2016.