Setlist: 2007-09-23 - Jake\'s; Wallingford, CT

[Klout]

the rate at which matt is learning new tunes is pretty mindblowing

[Ren]

...good to see that the expactations are as high as they used to be.  maybe that\'s a good thing cuz when they were at their best as a 4-piece, we all acted spoiled and demanded each show out do the one preceeding it, and were all overly critical if it wasn\'t.  don\'t know know what that says.  

definately the great times at jake\'s.  last week was the best, not that it matters...this one was experimental in my opinion and with that comes a risk.  no one gets anywhere without taking a few.   echer\'s>sleeping beauty was damn good.  i thought the jam>fairy was great, i don\'t really think that it needed to be all that crazy, i think it was played the standard way and really well.  crossroads was fun and new begining is a song that i would normally hate but for some reason i don\'t.  i always used to hate the "ballads" back in the day, maybe i\'m goin\' soft or something.  other than the the uh, words, i think surreal has some really great music i just need to pretend that they don\'t have a song where they actually sing, "do, rae, me, fa...."  can\'t all blow us away.  now a month without the breakfast begins....

[Dweasel Weasel]

Sheesh.  Wasn\'t at this one, but y\'all are tough on this band.  If they were a cover band, I could see where set lists would be critical.  Even if variety is extra- important for improv based bands, if they\'re jamming, does it matter whether they\'re jamming to the same tunes?   They could jam to just one song the whole night, and you\'re still going to get what you came for - free expression, right?

[davepeck]

Sheesh.  Wasn\'t at this one, but y\'all are tough on this band.  If they were a cover band, I could see where set lists would be critical.  Even if variety is extra- important for improv based bands, if they\'re jamming, does it matter whether they\'re jamming to the same tunes?   They could jam to just one song the whole night, and you\'re still going to get what you came for - free expression, right?

free expression here too.

[WALSH]

How could you know how "tough" the board is being when you start by saying you weren\'t there?  It was the least impressive of three shows, where the other 2 were great to amazing.

 I, for one, love the fact that this board is getting "tough" because it causes conversation and critical thought about songs/segues/etc...as opposed to the annoying fanboy fluffing that has always terrorized this board.  I don\'t know who gave the board anti-biotics, but it seems to have cured the case of the "BEST.EVER"s.

[Dweasel Weasel]

Whether the performance was a good or not is definitely fair game (and you\'re right about the "do no wrong sentiments).  But you didn\'t have to be there to question whether set list variety counts when you\'re dealing with improvisation.  I guess I was just trying to see if playing the same set list is a legitimate criticism when the songs aren\'t played exactly the same each time.

[WALSH]

The fact that they played alot of the same songs really didn\'t bother me as much as it has others, I really just felt like compared to the other 2 Jake\'s shows and the previous electric shows this past week...the playing in parts just seemed to be a little flat.  So maybe that is why some have begun to pick on the setlist repeats for this show.  The songs that were great had that little extra something that they had been able to tap into lately, but everything else just fell a bit short.  I really just think they guys were tired after the 4 night run and it made the show a little bit below average for the week, which isn\'t hard to do when everything else had pretty much been fire since 2nd set Daniel St.

After reading my original post, I didn\'t mean to sound so angry.

[skalnbyc]

After all the travelling east > to Syracuse > Syracuse show > travelling back to CT, I was quite Zoned out and didn\'t pay attention to much of the show.