, attached to 2015-08-16

Review by JMart

JMart I have to agree with the general feeling that this show was a letdown. As my buddy said "looks like they played tonight's show last night."

Probably, and I would still feel compelled to defend the band because:

1. you're not going to explode and top yourself every night, or at least these middle-aged men aren't going to.
2. expectations for Sunday MPP summer 2015 are honestly so high, probably too high at this point.

And yet...during the second set they didn't really sound focused or like they gave a shit, which I consider to be a concerning trend in a lot of shows from 2011 until now. They screwed up the intro to DWD. How many times have they played that? Trey wrecked some pretty simple chord changes in "shine a light" and looked pretty annoyed, presumably with himself. When you're at a show and dancing, it's easy to miss this, but with these webcasts it's much easier to see the facial expressions of each member. Trey looked pissed a lot of the night.
Twist has reached some pretty amazing heights this summer, but, like, really? here? It just seemed like an uninspired call, like 'hey we've been killing this one recently. Let's do it again!" They have so many songs, and I'm not calling for some big bust-out, but something fresher would have been nice, because this one went nowhere and the best thing about it was that the band realized it was over and moved on.
Almost by definition, not every show is going to be a really, really good one. Some nights the stars don't align and you go out and play a hard, workman-like set and grind it out. They didn't even do that tonight. I wouldn't be devastated if I'd seen this show, I wouldn't have walked out pissed, just deflated, having seen some really good performances this summer.
I've always thought Magnaball was an odd choice, since Dick's has seemed to serve as the defacto summer festival (especially for those of us not inclined to travel to an inconvenient place and camp for four days in the hot summer sun), but it sold out, so shows what I know!
I hope everyone has a fantastic time and you get to hear some great music.


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