Before taking six weeks off, the boys turn in another average one set show for the Laguna Seca Daze festival. Maybe they had a little too much fun the night before as there were missed sections here and there, but not too bad. The recording was another good one, like last night’s, maybe the same taper? Anyway…

Fishman gets the opener spot tonight with Lengthwise. This gives you the album feel of listening to Rift going into a rocking Maze. Mike was a little off and it seemed like they weren’t warmed up yet. Guelah also suffered a bit with sloppy playing and just was not as tight as it could’ve been. Poor Heart was good, maybe now they are warmed up? Nope, Trey fell off in the middle of Foam and I can’t think of a harder song to try to get back into after you fall off. Not the best Foam by any means. No Horse for the first time before a pretty good Silent, and this one has gotten consistently better over the course of this year. Nice transition going into Antelope, which was patient and pretty good overall. YaMar is getting better, as it has been recently introduced back into the set list. This one was fast and fun, though they almost blew the ending with Mike’s foreign guy rant. IDK brings Fish out with the washboard solo; funny stuff as usual. Melt also had some trouble spots from Trey and was just ok to my ears. Contact was nice to hear and pretty well played. Llama rocked as usual, no real problems here. Golgi was good, but nothing to special, just average.

Possum gets the encore spot tonight and was well played, but again, nothing too special.

I’m not sure what others are hearing, but again this is not four star playing by any means. There were way too many missed notes and sections for that to be true. Sorry folks, just my opinion. I’m going with three stars, because it wasn’t that bad.