What a weird fucking show. Not just the set either. Everything about tonight was just
First off, that coors courtyard thing is idiotic. get your ticket scanned so you can go into an "exclusive party" area that is not even connected to the venue itself and that has a merch stand and some food tents? makes no sense to me.
Kool and The Gang was a really fun opener. that was about the only thing that went as expected tonight.
It was still pretty bright out when the "house lights" (stadium lights) went out, so maybe people didn't realize they were on and were then turned off. it seemed like half the crowd didn't react to them going out. most places the crowd goes nuts when the house lights go out. hershey seemed like half the crowd didn't know it even happened. the crowd sounded like it was 200 people, not 20,000. i was in front GA and that area was into the show, but you could tell that the rest of the crowd just was out of it the entire night.
the sound was different too. tim was turned up WAY high, but it seemed like everybody else was up higher than normal. carter's snare was ear piercing. the sounded didn't seem bad to me, just really loud. one of the tapers that was near me commented that his levels were off the charts.
Squirm - standard, nothing special. one of my favorites from BW so i didn't mind.
Alligator Pie - finally returns! my other favorite from BW. disappointed it is still only about 5 minutes long. i don't know why they don't let this song stretch its legs.
Louisiana Bayou - kind of annoyed with this one. i like it in small doses but its getting way too much play lately.
Idea of You - i like it but it was already like the 5th time i saw it this summer. dave fumbles with the lyrics a bit.
Belly Belly Nice - standard, nothing special. weird show so far with so many newer songs.
Kill The Preacher - kind of pointless. it was cool the first couple times but now its just forced. its been getting worse every time i've heard it as dave seems to not know what to say when trying to think up new lines so its just the same stuff he usually says for it.
Don't Drink The Water - finally an old song that rocks.
If Only - mark whitfield guested and added that extra layer that this song lacks live. nice little solo towards the end, although i could have done without the wah effect. a more straight forward blues tone would have worked better. still a bit boring live though. put the crowd back to sleep after DDTW woke them up.
Crash Into Me - mark guested on this as well. didn't really add a whole lot as the song was played how it always is played. no extra solo section or anything.
it was around this time of the night when myself and the people around me noticed the giant black cloud coming towards us from behind. the forecast called for scattered thunderstorms and we thought this was one of them headed straight for us. a breeze picked up blowing towards the stage, so the smoke was just getting blown away. there wasn't much left for the lights and lasers to reflect off of the rest of the night. luckily no rain came though.
Drive In Drive Out - one of the highlights of the night for me. took me forever to finally get DIDO and now i've gotten it a few more times. enjoying it while i can. dave fumbles the lyrics a bit but its still good.
Granny - always fun to hear. nice little old-school run going on here that continued with
#41 - finally a big jam. standard performance for #41 this year with the long boyd solo, tim solo, and extra little boyd bit at the end.
Spaceman - why? had such a nice little run going.
Cornbread - not seeing it every other show has lead me to appreciate cornbread. its a fun song and is great live. they need to keep this on the "occasionally" list so we can enjoy it when we get it.
Love Lay Down - biggest highlight of the night for me. only other time i got LLD was scranton 06, some 50 shows earlier. jeff got a little too hyper at the end but overall was a great performance.
Rooftop - dave waived off the 12 string before the start of rooftop. i really like this song, but if they keep this up its going to get old quickly. its been played at pretty much every venue this year. its not as fun when you know its coming. it feels like how cornbread did back around 2008. same as every other performance this year.
PNP > Rapunzel - surprised to see this tonight as it was just played last night. it could have been played because it was cut last year due to a storm. pig and typical were cut last year too. just saying, dave. good version, thought maybe it was closing, but nope
Jimi Thing - with K&TG opening, i thought this was as good of a lock as there has ever been. i was fully expecting a 23 minute jimi with K&TG guesting and i was looking forward to it. so when jimi started with nobody else coming out, i was really disappointed that just a regular jimi was going to be closing, again. the song had a strange feel to it. crowd seemed pretty bored for most of it, which was odd.
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Runnin Down A Dream - never saw it before it was cool to see, but i don't need to see it again. tim's solo just keep going on. dave looked like he wanted to end the song and tim wasn't paying attention and just kept going.
Two Step - wasn't surprised to hear this start. standard version but had a variation of the overflow outro
overall, i wouldn't say it was a bad show. it wasn't particularly great either though. there were some highlights and a bunch of good songs, but it was just a really weird set.