I love stepping away from the catalog long enough to forget how powerful these guys were in their prime.

The by-the-numbers first set it anything but, with hot versions of Llama, Foam and Stash. Check out Trey's Van Halenesque crescendo in Stash!

Antelope, while getting off to a slow start, is a vicious frenzy by conclusion. Trey in particular seems hell-bent on exploiting his 'Doc, over and over, Gordon increasingly left frustrated by the continual build. It pays off.

I should mention that the sound quality of the recording I've grabbed is pristine, so clear you can hear Trey's weird little mouthing's during Reba. And this Reba wastes no time in blasting the second set right into the stratosphere. The first few minutes of the jam cement this as best of the year, Trey and Mike speaking in tongues from the same mouth, Fish exploding all over his toms and Page, well, being Page.

There's some strange things afoot with the BBFCFM (it clocks in at over 11 minutes long). The ridiculously long pause elicits numerous shouts and requests from the crowd, my favorite being "Free James Brown!" Fish indicates the Trey and Mike are going to start doing something illegal with the microphones, then begins the count-in in the Count's voice (Sesame Street). Brilliant.

When Trey finally realizes he's supposed to count back in, he gives a hilarious laugh and apologizes to everyone. This prompts some great banter.

"You thought that was avant-garde..."

FREE JAMES BROWN!

Swinging back up north to the Michigan Theatre the boys make their second visit for the 53rd show of the tour and they just didn't quite get "there" tonight for me. A great, crispy board recording on this one makes it a pleasure to hear, but the playing flaws are readily apparent. Each song seemed to have one or two rough spots, and Trey's set list cleaning led to some rusty ones in the second set.

Fish jumps right into a rocking Llama to open up with right into a good Foam. Mike seemed to have issues during Bouncing. Trey seemed to rush Stash and Mike was still not all there, but the jam was nice and dynamic. Ice was ok, they had that midway stop again and Trey was weak on the second climb and the end suffered a bit. Trey, again, was just a little off time with Fish for an average Glide. He then blows the lyrics during an ok, My Friend. ATR was a little fast from Fish so there were a few off notes here and there. Golgi also suffered timing issues. There were feedback issues before Antelope, which was ok for the most part, but Trey and Fish continued to not lock in so I thought the climax suffered tonight. Overall they are just not locked in tight to me.

Wilson leads off the second set and it's been a while for this one and it shows. And surprisingly Page was a little off? I don't seem to say that very often, but this continued well into Reba. Page had rough spots that threw Trey off a bit, but the ending jam was great. It got interesting as a good Landlady had a planned ending going into a rusty Halley's. They eventually drop the key a whole step on this one because it's too high for them to sing. Then another planned ending going into YEM, which was good, and had a great funky jam in the middle and a nice vocal jam too. Lifeboy was also a little rusty but nice to hear. It was the same thing for Oh Kee Pa going into a good Suzy. HYHU brings Fish out and the crowd gets a choice of song tonight. They settle on Rosie and then in a rare move Trey sticks on drums for the Ball Jam while Fish plays vac? Coil was good, Trey had a few off parts, but Page does a great job as usual to wrap up this average set.

It sounded like Mike was tuning up his bass for some reason and then stopped so they could go out front for Adeline. Then we get a great Mars! I love this song and this one had great stage banter in it. Priceless!

It's not for not trying, but this one just fell a little short for me because this leg of the tour has been so good. I'm going three stars tonight to bring the average down a bit. Better luck tomorrow?