, attached to 2014-08-01

Review by Esperanzan

Esperanzan SET 1:

Chalk Dust Torture: always down for this as an opener. Pretty slow tempo and very standard version.

The Moma Dance: classic party-starter placement. A bit shaky from Trey early on but he settles in and this one ends up grooving nicely.

Heavy Things: don’t care what people say, I love this song. No Trey solo here, Page tears it up on organ and makes this one feel extra rootsy. Very good.

555: standard. Trey takes a moment after the song to thank the crowd and talk about recording the song with the Muscle Schoals players. He seems chatty! First time in Alabama apparently, so makes sense.

Rift: decent for a 3.0 version but Trey still struggles a bit. >

46 Days: standard.

Tube: there is no such thing as a bad Tube, even if it’s totally meat-and-potatoes like this one.

Devotion to a Dream: standard.

Wolfman’s Brother: check out Mike’s playing during the jam! Slapping along like nobody’s business. Very cool as you don’t see him do that in jams much these days. Trey builds this one up to a great peak too! NICE. Very good Wolfman’s.

The Ballad of Curtis Loew: cool, forgot this got played pretty often in early 3.0.

Free: pretty icky bum note at 0:51 ish. Wish they’d done something more with this one. >

Character Zero: standard.



SET 2:

Down With Disease: outro riff before the jam is rough from Trey. Standard and blissful up through around 9:30 when Trey signals he wants to take things in a minor key direction. Fish keeps the same feel as Trey experiments with some cool effects jamming. Check out Mike on the wah-wah pedal @ 11:30, something else you don’t see him doing much these days. Trey takes them out of the minor key space at 13 minutes in. Is that Mike doing the burbly synth-ish thing around 14:00? Neat if so. Some more bliss jamming until the band enters a really cool tense space for a while with piano noises and more synthy Mike. That last 3 minutes is genuinely great and the best part of the jam. Otherwise a mostly standard, if pleasant, jammed out DWD. ->

Theme From the Bottom: very suddenly appears out of Disease. Very standard with a nice washy outro out of which appears… >

Tweezer: fuck yeah! Love the bit where Page starts TEARING it up on the clav at 3 minutes in out of nowhere. A pretty good, succinct, intense rendition that mellows out nicely around 8 minutes. Trey’s playing at the end is nice. Sounds like he’s playing with Piper or Tela for a bit, and then >

Prince Caspian: this one weirdly has Trey’s most dextrous playing of the night… for about a minute. Tiny version. Fish starts up a fast beat right at the end and eggs Trey on to pounce on it. Trey declines, and instead we get… >

Waiting All Night: good song, weird placement.

Fuego: good song, VERY weird placement. Needed more after Caspian and WAN. Briefly turns into Tweezer at 8:20, before a cool transition into ->

Slave to the Traffic Light: song is obviously a classic but set is all over the place at this point. >

2001: standard, short. >

Boogie On Reggae Woman: fun, but there’s no real cohesiveness left. AWESOME transition into ->

Run Like An Antelope: they mess around with the Boogie On feel constantly at the beginning here, the two songs basically meld into one for a bit a la Miami 2009. Then we get Munsters theme and Conga by Gloria Esteban teases – awesome. A big organic peak, some more Boogie On stuff in the Rye Rye Rocco section, and then a tight finish. Really great version of a song that I don’t always love. This one is top notch though.



ENCORE:

Bouncing Around the Room: standard.

Tweezer Reprise: standard, but watch out for the bass bomb at the start and Fish singing a song I can’t make out.



OVERALL: pretty nondescript, slightly above average show. Mike is the MVP all night. I want to say DWD is a big highlight, but it’s not really that interesting as a whole - maybe worth checking out though because your mileage might vary. Clear highlight overall is that Antelope which is fantastic for the era. Wolfman’s and Heavy Things are also worth relistens.

3.5 stars.


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