This was another sub-par show to my ears for late ’89. It made this a tough listen at times because it was an off night for Fishman mostly, accompanied by a recording with lagging tape speed from over the many generations.

Not a bad Dinner to start off the first set and La Grange was ok too except for the ending. Fish kind of fell off in Lizards making it average or less tonight. Foam continued that trend of loose playing. In a Hole and Rocky Top were ok. Bowie suffered the same issues and just wasn’t tight even though it rocked. The new Lawn Boy and Gin were ok and Golgi was a nice closer to a rather lame first set.

A-Train was a nice jazzy way to start the second set, and pretty well played. After three months of being broken up into parts we have the return of the full Fluffhead tonight and it showed some rusty spots, but otherwise was ok. Esther also had little off spots. Alumni rocked as usual but the tape must’ve gotten cut sometime because the rest of LTJP>Alumni was missing and they went right into Fee, which was kind of slow and sloppy. Mike’s was good, Hydrogen was sloppy and Weekapaug was average making the whole set kind of average and tired sounding.

Mike gets the whole back half of the second set tonight ending with his groove and continuing with a double encore of a really sloppy, on purpose, Contact and the always funny Creature from Mars. It seemed as though the boys just had it, like they new it was an off night and were too tired and or drunk to care at this point in the night.

Not very tight overall tonight, Fishman was off, Fluffhead made its return though, that was a plus. Two stars…