2023-10-11 Dayton, OH

 Onward to Dayton #2 - now this one, on paper at least, looks like an absolute BEAST!

10/11/23 Dayton, OH

Set 1

Set Your Soul Free - Hey, a 16 minute SYSF to open! What is it, 2018 again?! The song itself is SUPER powerful tonight! Like an exploding bomb from the get go! Around 8 minutes the jam begins. The guys drop into chill bliss, but Gordo has some sick bass FX going which give this a more exciting feel. Sometime around 10:30, this begins to evolve back into a hotter, more rocking state of affairs. Cool rhythmic interplay between everyone with a great push-and-pull section. From here they just build it slowly to a massive, rocking finale. Great stuff! Maybe not must-hear, but a terrific warmup nonetheless!

Funky B - First one since, what, Wilmington I think? Absolute HEATER as expected. Page the Rage is the star of this one. Kick. Ass. Then comes Machine Gun Trey and he absolutely annihilates everything in the building, laying waste to all of us like the Terminator going up against Skynet. Unbelievable. This wasn't a 10/10, this was a 100/10!!!! MUST HEAR!

Roggae - For the sake of not highlighting everything, I'll refrain for Roggae, but just know it's every bit as glorious as every other version ever played. Killer.

Kill Devil Falls - 12 minutes of ass kicking! Trey's voice is absolutely SHOT tonight, it must be said! This one stretches a good amount but when all is said and done it's basically a 12 minute, Type I firestorm of the melt-your-face variety!! Pure adrenaline and rock and roll insanity! THAT PEAK! THAT PEAK! THAT PEAK! MUST HEAR!!!

Steam - Again, doesn't this set look like something right out of summer 2018? Facemelting Type 1 of the highest order. See Roggae and KDF. Killer, but for the sake of not highlighting everything (and because I've heard better overall versions of Steam), I'll refrain once more, but it's absolutely worth a listen!!!

My Friend My Friend - Good version but nothing special. Strong as ever but nothing special in the slightest.

Crazy Sometimes - First one since Charleston 2019, I think?! This is totally killer. Must hear dance party ridiculousness. Awesome.

Walls of the Cave - Classic WotC to close the set. Killer as expected. Must hear face melting of the highest order!!! HOLY CRAP I HAVE GOOSEBUMPS!!! THAT EXPLOSIVE FINALE!!! LETS FREAKING GO!!!!!!


All in all, a great set! A total rock-and-roll-powerhouse affair! There wasn't that much that stood out beyond "terrific shredfest facemelting Type 1", but if you want to bang your head and have Trey pour lave directly into your ears for an hour, this is the set for you!!!!

I'd say Funky B, Kill Devil Falls, Walls of the Cave and probably Steam are the must-hear materials, though the opening Set Your Soul Free was a wonderful warmup too.

This set held better together as one whole than any particular highlights, really.

Set 2

Down With Disease - Ooh, a 17 min Disease to open! Please don't suck! Thank heavens that the reading of the song itself is GREAT for a 2023 version!!! Thank the lord!!! Very briefly the jam goes into a funky Type 2 zone, but 90 percent of this is just straight up fire-in-your-earholes Type 1 glory. Great return back into the theme to close! They stayed pretty close to home on this one, but they still took it for an absolute ride. If you just want to hear them rock the F out, again, this is the version for you!

Ruby Waves - A 31 minute Ruby Waves?! Oh boy, better buckle up! Already at only the 3 minute mark, we are starting to get out there! Trey noodling around while Page answers with squiggly synthesizer! Then it's back to a rock vibe and things get pretty chill. Pretty soon though, they are back to full power, just rocking out hard and nice. Things die back down once again and by 8 minutes, things are slowly starting to get "goopy". The tempo has slowed and we are fully into a bliss kind of jam, but there is a funky undercurrent of sorts that's hard to describe - it's a feel thing. Eventually, Trey sets a seagull looper in the background and the guys begin to jam upwards from this foundation. By 11 minutes, Trey is honking it up and the jam is starting to build towards a slightly latin-y, vaguely Twist-like feel. But it's still all Type I fire-raging. Just headbanging glory. Then, perfectly, at 12:30, Page jumps on the piano and starts POUNDING the hell outta those keys and we are off to the greatest peak in all of Peakville. At least we thought so! But alas, tis not to be - at 13 minutes, the jam finally goes full Type II (imo, at least) when we shift into the aforementioned Twist-style jam for real. This is where things start to get strange!!! By 15 minutes the latin-style jam has gone dark, with a brooding tensefulness beneath everything. Ooh, this is friggin' cool. By 17:30, Gordo has kicked on his FX and we begin to build towards another peak. The darkness subsided as quickly as it arrived and we are again in rock and roll bliss explosion land like the back half of a good Loving Cup or something.

And then suddenly, at 19:50....

The song reaches the point where it would normally conclude. They do the theme and you think it's about to end, but then they decide to pushing onwards and drop into full blow, wacky sound FX Type II. Similar to something out of, say, 1999 or 2000, this is all about crazy, scary ambience. Fishman going nuts, Trey on the pitch shifter, extreme "wooshing" sounds in the background. You get the picture. This goes for several great minutes of soundscape creation until around the 24 minute mark Trey begins vamping an uptempo funk kind of thing. Fishman is of course all over this. They stay "vamping" for a long time, just slowly building the sonic "scenery", if you will. Slow additions that over time build it up. Eventually around the 27 minute point Trey changes up his sound and Gordo kicks on his FX again, leading us down another side street into more wonky robo vamping. The jam just builds more and more into a full blown robot meltdown like its 2021 again!!! I mean, they are out there deep in the digital wormhole, then suddenly at exactly the 30 minute point they lead back into Ruby Waves and close it perfectly like they just wrote the final sentence of a novel....wow....

OBVIOUSLY THAT WAS FRIGGIN MUST HEAR. Wasn't my favorite jam of the year, but I wouldn't begrudge anyone listing it as a contender for the title!!! My goodness - what JOURNEY!


...to be continued....

Lifeboy - A very rare Lifeboy allows us to come back to earth after the ridiculousness of that Ruby Waves... Excellent.

Piper - Great slow build out of the end of Lifeboy! Piper is excellent tonight. Does the Type 1 rocking out you expect. Awesome. After a while it turns downwards into a great "late night" vibe of sorts and basically fades itself to a conclusion slowly.

Backwards Down the Number Line - Man, feels like ages since we've had a Number Line, no? Number Line is Number Line. See Roggae. Excellent version but nothing special.

I Am the Walrus - HELL YES!! We get a 2nd version played this year?!?!?

Egg In a Hole - Melt your face.

Possum - Is Possum.



All in all, this show was a big step up from night 1. I'd put this on par with Nashville #2, probably. Jam-wise, Ruby Waves was pretty much the only thing that escaped the "rocking the F out" Type I trap, if you will. This show kicked major ass - my nitpicks are, well, nitpicks! There isn't that much to say - the show speaks for itself. Excellent gig!