I love this show....good memories.

The opener "C'mon baby" was great to here after catching it on Trey Solo Band tour....then just look at the rest of that first set....that should be a second set. Thick Moma crashes into a Frankenstein (not to be taken lightly in an indoor venue). Halley's> Fee> Stash to close the set...hmmmmm.

Now look at that second...it just looks ok (?)....but they rocked that crappy venue with songs. The energy was through the roof. Birds was a hot ragging opener....then my favorite TWEEZER!!!!! which drops into a very cool NICU..Then Mule...and Mike's little chant/yell after the jam is just awesome, I felt like I was at church it had a real spooky feel to it. Fast Enough was perfectly placed and very true for the energy in the building. And since it wasn't fast enough...Piper would be fast enough. Nice little Character Swag-O to finish off the set.

What I really remember from this show was the crowd being just totally pumped...similar to the second night in Philly (fall '99). After the lights went on after the encore....you couldn't see across the arena. There was sooooo much smoke and sweat a thick haze settled into the arena. Everyone was dancing and grooving so hard our collective sweaty bodies had produced heavy condensation in the venue...a sweat cloud....everything in the building was wet....it was even dripping from rafters. Now that's how hard they rocked.

Right, night 2 at Allstate. I didn't know the opening song, but its silly chorus (“Let's go, let's go, let's go downtown!”) somehow managed to get stuck in my head for MONTHS. The rest of the set was full of hard-hitters: quite a surprising choice of songs for the first half of the show. Song 3: Frankenstein! Gosh. Followed by Halley's! Halley's, however, was a distinctly relaxed affair (not necessarily a bad thing, of course). Stash was rather subdued as well; certainly nothing to write home about.
Set 2 opened up with a truly rockin' Birds, with Trey determinedly shredding like it was... well, the year 2000. Tweezer proved to be more exciting: at around 11:30, Trey began to repeatedly strum the same note, which made room for Mike and Fishman to step up and make things interesting. Trey might have advantageously employed this strategy much more in 2000... I'm reminded of the gun shop scene in Bittersweet Motel, in which Mike scolds Trey for playing “too many notes.” (On the other hand, 2000 also gave birth to the minimalist/ambient monster set 2 of 6/14... I guess you never can know for sure with this band, eh?)
Anyhow, FEFY – a real rarity by this time (played a whopping 3 times in 2000) – proved to be a real treat, boasting an inspired solo from Trey. The only shortcoming of this version: its ending sloppily came out of left field, right in the middle of the chord progression. Rather odd, really.
The red red worm was up to bat next. At about 5:30-6:00, Piper really accelerated. Bloody hell, this Piper was fast. Give it a listen, you'll find yourself wondering where all the speed came from. (Fishman, probably.) Yes, you're right, as far as I can tell. What the fuck got into him? If, up to this point, the show had seemed perhaps a bit low-key despite the song selection, Piper sure managed to stir things up. It might have ended at 13:00, at which point the jam evaporated into steam and dissipated... instead, we got a highly unusual (albeit short) bass solo from Mike, followed by a few minutes of that aforementioned ambient-infused goodness. Yep, I guess Trey took Mike's advice after all. Everyone was on the same page for Character Zero.
The Sleeping Monkey > Tweeprize encore was appropriate (most nights I'd actually take Sleeping Monkey over another Bold As Love). All-in-all, this show gets my stamp of approval. Better than night 1, and one of the better (not “BEST”) shows of year, I'd say.