, attached to 1993-03-22

Review by DollarBill

DollarBill Wow! I've been waiting for a killer show and this is it! This is the only show at the Crest Theatre, 35th of the tour, and it's a good one. With an absolutely crystal clear recording you can feel the magic happen and hear every note, good or bad. It was a real pleasure to listen to this. If you would like to take a drum clinic, Fishman is on fire the whole night!

A solid Chalk Dust right out of the gate with lots of Mike and Fish in the mix, kind of low Trey level pretty much throughout the whole show, which was not a bad thing. Guelah was also nice and tight. Pen had some DAT noise in the recording and a few off spots from Trey and Mike. Stash was very dynamic and well played with a few spots from Mike again. Here I love the quality of recording as you can hear Trey say, "Whatever you changed, don't change it back." Monitor mix maybe? A standard Bouncing follows. Rift was much better, but still almost off time at certain points and again very dynamic. Woo Hoo! Weigh is back, I love this song. It's pretty rare and this one is spotty from Trey, but Page really holds it together. Reba was reasonably good, a few off spots in transition, good dynamic jam, weak Mike at the end. Sparkle had much more control to it tonight. Bowie had the usual antics before the song starts, and this one was pretty weak to my ears. There were off spots in the composed section and the ending jam was just weak. Maybe they were just tired after a really good first set.

Nice solid, dynamic Golgi to open up second set. Ice had some weak spots, and maybe that's why...Good Lord here we go! Fish's woodblocks and Ice's spacey jam take us to Gamehenge!!! Lizards is pretty well played and is followed by Esther's "Flying Jam" section for the narration leading us into a weak, but eventually rocking, Tela. Wilson also rocks as does Bag. Bag is still rare at this point and it really is great tonight. I love Forbin's, and this one was pretty good. What's kind of funny here is that the most practiced transition into Mockingbird was actually worse than any of the other unpracticed ones between the Gamehenge songs. Anyway, Mike had some off spots in MBird and in the rocking Sloth. McGrupp is added in and also had some rough spots in the lyrics and playing. Page was accompanied by Fishman on the washboard during his solo. Somehow, the piano was also out of tune this whole time too. Mike's had some tiny off spots as well, but a good jam with it and I'm not sure what kind of antics were going on at this point because it seems they aren't playing bad as much as they just aren't really playing notes. Was it strange dances while lying on their backs from Trey and Mike? Anyway, Hydrogen was just ok as usual. Weekapaug sounded a little tired and unimaginative in the jam. It rocked hard enough to round out a legendary second set.

Everyone gets shushed for Grace and we switch to an audience source for the encores. It's been a while for Fire and it shows in this sloppy performance. That doesn't really matter at this point.

I can't stress enough how good Fishman was tonight. Mike had a rough time overall which should make this more of a four star show, but the clean recording and Gamehenge saga bump this one up to at least four and a half. And notice how many times I mentioned the word dynamic. It's funny to think that maybe the other night when the cops kept shushing them at the Greek, it made them more conscious of their dynamics while playing, which is a good thing.


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