this was/is a tough show to rate, because the bottom line was that the majority of fans (myself included) exited the venue feeling satisfied overall.

the song selection & placement was mostly first-rate, and the performances were mostly crisp & solid (perhaps the "alumni blues">"letter to jimmy page" was a little shaky, but the levity in general + humorous post-song banter more than made up for it). a "tweezer" placed in the middle of a "mike's" groove threw people for a loop in a good way, being that this supposedly hasn't happened in more than 20 years (despite that, my friend will vouch that i actually called for "tweezer" right before they played it....but blame me for being too naive to even be aware of that aforementioned fact until the following day, LOL).

however, the jamming, while interesting, was at times economical to a fault. often i hear people lay the blame on trey for this, but i can't agree with this sentiment 100%. for example, during the jam in "david bowie", trey circled the wagons a bit & then appeared fully ready to blow some heads off at a certain point....however, page pulled out of the jam early, forcing the rest of the band to follow suit. trey even missed the first sequence of "bowie"'s exit licks because he clearly wasn't ready to end the song. oh well....

but when all is said & done, the question is: was it an entertaining night? the answer was most definitely "yes". maybe it's not a show i'll reach for when assembling a "best of" jamming compilation.....but just from a song-oriented standpoint, the hits in charlotte far outweighed the misses.