Great show from beginning to end!

Nice building energy early on. Possum rocked, but never completely exploded, going instantly into a similarly rockin' Wilson. KDF had one painful flub where Trey played the lead line in the wrong key or something, but was overall solid, with a very energetic jam. Nice purpose and focus to these tunes. Glide was a great surprise, and the rockin' part rocked much harder than I remembered it. That was kind of the theme of the night -- a lot of the composed stuff just sounded really aggressive, and it absolutely worked.

Bouncing was Bouncing, Reba (unfinished) was pretty and excellent as always. D&M was sloppy but still a welcome surprise. Guyute absolutely killed me; I'm still sore form head-banging. Thrilling rocker. Mike was loud, Trey's tone was crunching and shrieking, and Fish was punishing the kick and snare. I needed a break, but they went right into Maze. Another key to the energy of this set was the lack of pauses between songs. Good Maze, with a nice little chaotic tension and freaky light show going right into the climax riff. First Tube follows Maze so naturally I hope they play that combo in the future. The biggest disappointment of the night for me was that Trey's distortion on this solo made all his high notes physically painful. Shoulda worn earplugs for this.

After the first set's thrills, the second set started out kind of slow. I like S&SS and was glad to hear it, but the jam stayed pretty tame. Likewise with R&R -- good jam, but nothing super exciting. Seven Below got a little more interesting, the jam got a little more out there. An excellent quiet jam sank into an ambient sound wall -- oh well -- before launching a dark-sounding Twist. The Twist jam packed a bit more punch, and the cumulative run of the 2nd set reached a satisfying point. At this point, thanks to the first set, I had pretty much gotten my money's worth. When they started Mike's, I only prayed they would play the whole ending. Boy did they ever. Fantastic high octane jame, and absolute thrasher. The red & white lights were strobing like lightning, and I pretty much used up my reserves of energy jumping up (way up) and down to the beat. I rested during a well played Hydrogen and nodded along to standard Weekapaug and Horse->Silent.

YEM started, and I figured a concise, rocking version would mostly close things out, maybe followed by a 4-minute rocker like Cavern. Wrong! This YEM brought the best few minutes of funk I've seen in my 17 shows. Great Page solo evolved into terrific funk groove. Highly recommended tape listening. Mike's solo was nice. Fish dropped out and then came back in to finish it up. Vocal jam started out with almost distinguishable words, then became murky staccato as the white lights glided around the audience with the band in blackness. The guys got louder, and the lights added some color and began swinging around the arena. This built and built until a frenzied lightshow accompanied a near-screaming wail. Awesome! They had a nice climax to end on, but kept going and took it down, ending it a few seconds later. Wow. What a set.

Carini encore? Would have been perfect after all this rock. The guy next to me and I called it simultaneously. Alas, some 4-minute song I didn't know followed. Minor letdown, but at least it was catchy, sing-along-able, with a punchy, short solo.

I'm not sure how much of this will translate on tape without the high volume and the section 1 floor-seat experience of the lights. Seven Below is good jamming, Mike's Song is a heat-seeking missile, and YEM is a very, very good YEM.