Last weekend Eileen and I headed up to Boston to visit Kevin and Jaime and see our favorite band, moe. Here's a little clip from the show I posted to YouTube:
I have seen moe. probably 20-30 times and I think this might be the best show I've been to, although I feel like every time I see moe., it's the best show ever. But this one really was great. For those of you who don't know moe., they are a Jamband, which is a sort of Rock-Fusion similar to Phish and many other bands. One of the great things about Jamband is that the continue the tradition initiated by the Grateful Dead of allowing and encouraging their fans to bring audio equipment to the shows and record and distribute audience recordings.
Typically these recording are not as high quality as a live album, which uses the feed from the soundboard mixed with some audience microphones. Audience recording just use a microphone, so the clarity isn't as good, but it does often better capture the feel of a live show as it collects the ambient noise of the crowd. This show is no exception and there is an excellent audience recording available from the Live Music Archive at http://www.archive.org/details/moe2008-02-02.flac or from the BitTorrent site that I originally downloaded it from.
Here's the setlist:
moe.
February 2, 2008
Orpheum Theater, Boston, MA
I: Also Sprach Zarathusa* > Crab Eyes, Queen of Everything, Understand,
All Roads Lead to Home > Waiting for the Punchline,
Brent Black > Bring You Down > Brent Black
II: Skrunk > Lazarus, Lost Along the Way > Brittle End,
Four > Yodelittle** > Rebubula
Encore: Raise a Glass, Captain America
* Not played by the band, recording played over PA while the band took stage
** Baby Elephant Walk tease
For me, the highlights of the show were the Brent Black > Bring You Down > Brent Black, which was something original that I've never heard on any recording, the 2001 theme right into Crab Eyes to start the show, the Skrunk > Lazarus 2nd set and the epic Four > Yodelittle > Rebebula to close the 2nd set.
moe. down 7 is in the books and here are the photos. Rain was definately the story for the weekend, but we managed to survive and have a good time despite hurricane Ernesto. Page's band was definately my favorite non-moe. performance of the weekend. Umphrey's McGee was a close second. moe. was typical moe. Awesome from start to finish, despite the rain. Kevin and I defended our title as moe. down horseballs champs (against Jesse and somebody else?). Moe's tavern was the hang out for the weekend as a place to get out of the rain, stay warm and catch a bit of the Irish. See you at moe. down 8.
There's some pretty good music coming to the DC/Baltimore area in the coming months, I'm looking forward to it. The easiest way to check out the whole schedule is the calendar on My Jambase page. This Sunday has Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Umphrey's McGee and Marc Broussard at Wolftrap. Definately excited about Umphrey's and Bela, don't know much about Marc Broussard. I have to download some of his shows off of the Live Music Archive.
Also, I just bought tickets for Ratdog for two nights at Ram Head Live! in Baltimore's Inner Harbor. It's a new, pretty cool music venue, I saw The Weekapaug Orchestra, a Phish cover band, there a few months ago. They were pretty good and it was my first chance to check that venue out. It has that new, state-of-the-art feel. It was pretty empty for Weekapaug Orchestra, there were even parts of the venue that they had blocked off. There are a couple of different bars throughout, and there are two-levels. I'm not sure exactly how many people it holds, but their website says it is 26,000 square feet, if that is help to anyone. I would say it's bigger than the 9:30 Club but smaller than Pier 6 Pavilion.
Anyway, I've been listening to some of the Ratdog shows from this summer tour and they sound pretty good. If you want to listen for yourself, try the July 15th show from Great Woods, which you can get off of bt.etree.org. I really like the way Ratdog jams. They have a lot of good segways from song to song where it feels like no one person is really soloing, the whole band is just improving as one. Reminds me of moe.