Widespread Panic 04/16/05 Radio City Music Hall; New York, NY
1: Good People, Chilly Water > Use Me > Chilly Water, Little Lilly, Pilgrims, Big Wooly Mammoth > Run For Your Life, Pigeons, Climb To Safety
2: Surprise Valley, Bust It Big, Junior, Party At Your Mama\'s House, Driving Song > Low Rider > Red Hot Mama > Driving Song, Let Her Cry, Fishwater, Imitation Leather Shoes
E: Don\'t Be Denied, Tall Boy
Overall a rockin good show by the de facto jam kings. They came on very promptly at 8:00 while the house was still less than half full. Kind of a werid way to start. The opener turned into a throwaway, but Chilly Water >Use Me > Chilly Water really got the show going. The energy did not let down after that and first set felt full and complete by the end. Good job there. You know a band is on when it feels like they\'ve completed a full thought at the end of Set I. Set II featured some sweet segues and no letdowns. Really liked the jam in Driving Song, they let go of the reins a little bit and dropped into some psychedelic stuff smoothly. Yes, that\'s Red Hot Mama the Funkadelic tune, gotta give props to anyone who steps up to cover that band. The rest of the set was straightforward but quality. No crazy climactic jams, no left field jams, just good solid rock n roll energy. After a long, long break before encore (a good 4 minutes...way too long) during which there was very little noise, they played a very sweet Don\'t Be Denied and finished strong with Tall Boy. I\'d give this show a 7.5, with extra credit because it was played in Radio City, hands-down the best indoor venue in America. I enjoyed hanging out with all sorts of Spreadheads from all over the country.
*Snippet side stories*
-I was hanging out with my friend Lindsay and 4 of her friends. One of them got nabbed right outside the front door of RCMH for selling unofficial shirts. They didn\'t let him out until noon the next day. Be careful vending in the city!
-This guy a couple of seats down from me was passed out for the whole 2nd set. I mean, head back, mouth open, arms limp, unnatural-position passed out, enough to make me look over at him every so often to make sure he was still breathing. The weird thing is, his girlfriend, who was smoking a bowl to her head every ten minutes, would occasionally stop dancing and start violently making out with him. He was completely comatose, and she would grab him and ferociously make out with him. It was kinda disturbing.
*Light show review*
OK, since I was watching the lights extremely closely and critically, I have a few thoughts. (I was seated in the middle of the 1st balcony, eye level with the rig and the sound rig, the best seat in America for a concert.) They opened with a very cool effect, putting white light on the huge curtain that halos the stage, then killing it during the Chilly Water jam to bring out the main rig. The bulk of the light show was the chevron-style back lights you see in the picture. At first I thought these would be merely a nice addition, but in fact they are the focal point of the show, accounting for about 75% of the total light output and about the same percentage of engineer\'s effort. I loved the concept of these but was disappointed with the execution. Basically, they kill the main rig. Any time a rig light is positioned in front of the backlights (which is nearly all the time) that rig light essentially becomes ineffective. (Look at the rig lights in the picture...notice how you can\'t see them in front of the backlights.) The backlights were on for the entire show. It would have been awesome if they killed them for a while, then came back for a while, etc. The contrast was huge the one time they turned the backlights off. They missed a huge opportunity there. Also, there were virtually constant motion effects in the backlights, which looked good. However, they were so focused on this that they rarely moved the rig lights. They pretty much stuck with a couple of set positions and let the backlights handle any motion. Another missed opportunity. And they only flashed once the entire show, for about 15 seconds. While I\'m firmly in the Kuroda camp of timing and color over motion and effects, there\'s no getting around the fact that they left a lot of thunder sitting in the rig. I don\'t know how new the backlight chevron setup is, but I sensed a general level of discomfort in getting the rigs to compliment each other.
