Sounds like a fair assessment to me. Agree with @bertoletdown as well, especially re. Trey. His clean energy and vision at DCU II certainly made the difference there. After catching the opening set of shows in Worcester I've only been paying cursory attention, for various reasons. I like the Birds-> Train from AC2 but haven't checked anything out from this recent trio of shows yet. Starlake II certainly sounds promising, indeed; I'll be headed there next.

This may be an obvious question, but I just *don't get* why the band, and Trey in particular, chooses to play so many songs every night ... the result being that lots of songs lose a bit of their tour-mythology lustre, and there's less room for jamming. If the jams weren't interesting and well executed, I'd almost care less, because I wouldn't be paying attention. But goddamnit they ARE great. They just make up such a small portion of the show. I was thinking about this the other day listening to the 6/8 Sand, which is a great little piece of work. And at the time-- or in the days following -- I was spewing the same "i don't care if it's 8 minutes or 20" line. But you know what? It does matter. If the band takes that chance and goes for it, those 20 minutes might not all be the same caliber of jamming, but they also might (look at the 5/26 Waves last year, or the 6/3 Disease). And moreover it's more of an adventure, more unknown. And I'd gladly take a bit more experimentation that may or may no go somewhere than another Horse> Silent, Cavern. Plus, do you know how much more fun a Possum is when it's coming off twenty minutes of jamming, and has been played only two or three fewer times on tour?

Sorry to rant, but I do it out of love, and because quite frankly because it seems like it would be so easy for the band to do this, and that it would make a huge difference in the overall caliber of the shows..