The crowd during pregame was unusually amped, I thought, and I mentioned to a friend that it all had a feeling like the Worcester 2012 tour opener - small Northeast city, classic indoor venue, big excitement. And so it came to pass.

Moma Dance opener gave everyone a chance to settle in but there was something extra on offer as it stretched out longer than a standard Moma opener. Ditto Tube - developed a nice jam and with two funk fest openers the crowd was into it. Good Theme and Free pairing followed. For me, the set then sagged a bit with a Army of One, Halley’s Comet, Everything’s Right triptych but recovered with a nice >Cities and WoTC closer with an extended jam out of the Silent Trees segment.

I though I heard a Ghost somewhere in Trey’s warmup strums as the band chatted out the second set opener, and there it was. A solid version but not nearly the 11/28/09 version that everyone was immediately hoping the boys would conjure up. Ditto the No Mans Land and Piper that followed - solid but the peaks kind of left me feeling unresolved. I’m always hoping for that rapturous moment when the inexplicable happens. So when they kicked into 20 Years Later, I figured that it would just be one of those shows that never quite got over the top. Bwahahaha.
The jam took an unexpected turn and just grew and grew, bigger, darker, scarier, a seething monster that would not be satisfied until it had eaten everyone in attendance. I turned to Kim and said, “ there’s really no way out of this, is there?” Jaws we’re dropping around me. And yet somehow they reined it back in and landed in...

Show of Life. Really? I’ll leave during a SoL encore, so much do I not like this trite, smarmy little song. And yet...it worked. We all needed to breath after the monster ride we had just survived, and the jam was actually a bit extended and pretty. Plus out of the outro jam came a raging 2001 and Character Zero closer that let everyone throw down and celebrate being alive. Then to top it of a Hood encore, more of the raging rather than introspective variety, but everyone left the building pumped and excited for rest of fall tour.

Couple of side notes. My first show was here, 12/1/03, and this was my 50th. Nice symmetry. Add in that it was Kelli’s birthday and we had a special evening. Second note. The lights. Whoa. We were on the floor and the rig actually extended out a bit over the rail. With Kuroda’s new (since Bakers Dozen) swooping up and down sets there were times we felt as though we were inside the lights. There were some moments when the projector bodies themselves were being lit giving the impression of weird alien spaceship technology swirling over our heads. Waaay much fun.