Thanks for this @andrewrose -- I wouldn't dare speak for any human being other than myself (and even then only half the time at best) but I've always held your contributions in high esteem, and think this is a judicious and even moving review.

Some dipshits turned up in this thread. That's cool -- it's a big tent. Big enough for argument, no less.

I haven't listened closely to all three nights, but I've been sampling, and your review sent me back to the Blossom Birds (thanks for that, it brightened my work morning!). Trey does sound a little rusty, and a handful of gear-grinding transitions and draggy tempos -- beyond the funky Llama -- are pricking up my ears, presumably unnecessarily. I'm with you on the Gin; your 'blowing off steam' phrase captures the feeling of it perfectly, as far as I'm concerned, and always reminds me of Coventry, though the music certainly doesn't.

Mind you, a rusty genius is a genius, and the band are still playing fine music. I love the Alaska > WTU > Piper > Golden Age sequence and would have jumped out of my skin during the Stash > Plasma. It's a nice joke; it's great to hear the old men fooling around a little. Pity about Trey's Golgi singing.

(I wonder if Trey is a middle-aged man with an early-winter cold.)

As always the goal is to hear clearly and speak honestly. Andrew, it sounds like you were hearing the band clearly last night, and it seems you're honestly reporting what you heard and felt. And the paradox -- guys, please remember that Andrew already knows this, this is one of the things he's saying for heaven's sake -- the paradox is that you can clearly hear a totally different thing from the person next to you, and honestly report a totally different experience. No one need be lying or stupid or deaf or inattentive for this to be the case. Neither steals from or cancels out the other.

Whining about this irreducibility certainly doesn't make you cool.

I've complained in the past about the disproportionate weight that 'jaded' frontpage reviews have here, and I know some folks are responding to that same sense. I can't fault anyone for sharing my complaints -- though I wish I'd been more civil at those times or just not complained about folks who are, after all, volunteers doing God's work. Moreover, I should've remembered, and I hope everyone else remembers too, that one writer's opinion is one writer's opinion, no matter what importance PageRank assigns to it. Andrew's not 'yucking your yum' (what a tiresome thing for an adult to say in response to a critical review), he's putting his finger on an aspect of this moment in the band's history -- an aspect that (1) shouldn't diminish any fan's experience but (2) needn't be overlooked, either.

Life is mostly middle. It's OK to look around and see it and say it -- if it's true, I'd say we're obligated to do so. I'm glad Andrew did that here, as he has for a long time. Please, please, know that the music and the community can be gifts if you take them that way.