OK, so musically, this sounds like a pretty decent show. Ya Mar is funny, with lyrics centered around the phrase "Napkin Pa," and I always like hearing the original "Brothel Wife" lyrics to Cavern (although "Penile Erector" makes me giggle). There's a trippy intro to Caravan, and fairly smokin' versions of La Grange and JJLC. Oh, and an old style Rift taboot.

Now, the other side of the coin is that the quality of the available recording is pretty terrible, especially early on in the first set, although it improves to tolerable by the end of the show. I usually make an effort to keep sound quality out of the equation when I'm rating a show, although it has a tendency to influence my ratings subconsciously. But is it totally unfair to take the that into account? In a sense, the purpose of ratings is to offer some (albeit subjective) guidance to people looking for shows to download. It's one thing for later shows that have a variety of sources, especially 2.0 and 3.0 shows which are all available for purchase in SBD quality. But what about these older shows where you may only have one existing recording to choose from, and it's crappy? I don't know, I keep going back and forth on it. In this particular case I had originally thought about marking this down to two stars based on sound quality, but I think it improves enough and there is enough good, listenable music to merit 3 stars anyway. So I'm punting on that question for now. But if anyone has thoughts about whether it's fair to take recording quality into account when rating a show, I'd love to hear 'em.

So, yeah, 3 stars.