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 Howdy folks! As the title says, welcome to my archive of live show reviews as I have posted on the Steve Hoffman Music Forums website! I pr...

Sunday, July 6, 2025

2025-04-23 San Francisco, CA

 4 23 25 San Franciso

Set 1

Holy mother of whatever, this opening sequence.... The opens on an absolutely RIDICULOUS note with a 12 minute Simple into a PYITE. Simple goes type 2 around 6 minutes, spending its time in a tensely atmospheric kind of majestic area. Not dark at all but there's this "weight" to it. Some X Factor for sure!!

Around 12 minutes, the speed suddenly increases for about 20 seconds. In hindsight, they were "teeing up " for what was about to come.

And boy what was about to come!!! They execute a GENUINE segue into Punch!! Yup, thats a legitimate Simple>Punch right there, boys and girls! Even better, Punch absolutely kicks effing ass in the extreme! X Factor all over this bad boy!!! For a start, its uptempo and tight. It spends nearly FOUR MINUTES in the intro section, Trey playing around with loops and delays etc, just getting into it hard. Longest Punch intro since 7/23/99? The song is heavy and hard hitting. They nail it. They obviously made an executive decision to slow down the Landlady section significantly, because the tempo DROPS, but thats totally ok because it allows them to nail the parts and actually kinda gives it some oomph as well. This is one of the best Punch's I can recall in the last few years, full stop (and its been improving over time for sure). This is total must hear material.

Wow!!!

The magic keeps flowing on into a 14 minute Gumbo!!! The X Factor continues in an even bigger way. The jam begins a murky, soupy funky whatever. Very slowly they execute one of those "wait, how did we get here?!" moves upwards into a soaring, explosive peak fest of a finale. This is like a screwed up 46 Days on steroids or something. One of the SICKEST jams I can recall. Obviously, its easily the GOAT Gumbo since, well, whatever version post 1.0, eh? Total X Factor magic. Just insane!!

Up next is Reba. They nail the composed part and Trey turns in an excellent and emotional solo, light on the shredding but digging in hard. I wouldn't necessarily call it must hear, but its definitely downright excellent at the same time. Awesome.

Following that, we get the bust out of The Well. Why in the love of God is this a rarity?! There is zero reason for this to not be in regular rotation!!!! This version is a standard type 1 reading, blazing a path of destruction, but again brought to an unsatisfyingly unjammed conclusion. JAM THIS AGAIN, YOU COWARDS!!!

The penultimate song of the set is an excellent Bowie. Love the slightly extended intro, Trey playing around. Compositionally, they pretty much nail it. Awesome. And this Bowie is AWESOME!! The whole "noodle jam" section ACTUALLY kinda goes type almost 2ish, moving into this cohesive, uptempo kind of melodic bliss rock whatever. I swear there are McGrupp teases at one point. Another barnburning X Factor laden rendition. This Bowie is absolutely insane!!! Lets get it!! And im not a Bowie guy, so thats saying something!!! This thing is tight, its adventurous and it SMOKES!!! THAT PEAK FINALE!

Im dead. All hail the BG2025 Bowie.

This world destroying set concludes with Character Zero. Burns as always. Nuff said. :)

All in all, this set was unbelievable!! Surely, in time, this will stack up as one of the strongest first sets of the modern age. Simple>Punch, Gumbo and Bowie were all must hear and EVERYTHING else was excellent. Not one single weak or even lesser song in the set, really.

A+ This set punched me in the face and stole my lunch money 

 Set 2

Sample in a Jar is the "troll" opener of the set. Good stuff but merely a warmup before....30 MINUTE TWEEZER!!! LETS FREAKING GO!!! :D The jam begins with Trey picking out this scratchy harmonic rhythm. He then makes a cool loop of it and jumps on the robo fx to jam on top. This goes for a bit before Trey returns to a regular tone, doing some quasi-Manteca jamming (you can actually call it teasing probably!)
-----They spend the very next long while type 1 jamming this sucker to oblivion. And its friggin EXCELLENT. This beast is powerful! Around the 13 minute mark it begins to shift, Trey jumping over to the robo wah, Fishman introducing a new drum pattern and the whole thing morphing into this watery kind of robo funkiness. Out come the textural synths.
-----Trey still on the robo wah, at 14.30 the jam evolves into a laid back bliss chill out. The X Factor has struck. We are afloat in the sea of blissful relaxation... A super textural, soundscape kind of jam ensues. Absolutely glorious. Slowly they peak it to a cool motif peak section. Ethereal, yo!!! Holy crap this is beautiful!
-------They stay here a LOOOONNNGGG time, absolutely exploring every inch of this "ascending motif" jam. This is soooooo 1999/2000 Phish!!!! Around 19 minutes, Trey makes a textural loop and the jam slowly begins to rebuild some power, Fishman beating the crap out of his Tom's like they owe him money. This is unbelievably sick.
------Around 20.30, they begin to build into a robo infused, dark and murky and stompy kind of heavily rhythmic jam. This is THICC AF. Big booty IG baddies aint got nothin on this sucker!!!! THIS IS THE SICKEST THING IVE EVER HEARD IN MY LIFE.
------At 23 minutes they begin another motif leading to an insane extended peak. At 24 minutes Page does this incredible descending piano motif underneath Treys screaming extended leads. THIS IS FREAKING INCREDIBLE!!! WHAT IS GOING ON!!!!!!! HOLY MOTHER OF CRAP!!!
-------Then, just as quickly, at 25 minutes they totally shift the jam into a feel good, almost tropical kind of upbeat rock zone. Not bliss rock, definitely more...feel good, I guess.
------At 27 minutes it begins to quiet down into a relaxed zone again. Spectacularly good melodic soloing from Trey ensues. He jumps on the wah and the jam quickly fades itself out....This is the greatest thing Ive heard in my life. This somehow leaves the 4 22 Ruby in the dust!!!!

What can I possibly say that hasn't already been said a million times before by me. This was an extraordinary Alzheimer version of Tweezer. Full stop. Period.As with Ruby the night before it was perfectly measured, organic, adventurous, multisectional and just all kinds of what in the hell.Put this on the Mount Rushmore of Tweezers since 2009.

Top 3 or 4 post COVID version all day.

Orange Beach 2022
MSG7 2023
Berkeley 2023
St. Louis 2024
Shoreline 2021
Alpharetta 2021

And now San Fran 2025.....

A lovely Lonely Trip is next, giving us a much needed cooldown. Good version that brings us to a 13.5 minute Crosseyed. Crosseyed is must hear. Blazing as usual, around 9 minutes it goes full type 2 into another dark and fiery kind of robo whatever you wanna call it jam. Its sick.

Pillow Jets keeps the fire going. It stays type 1, but to my ears its as good as any ever played. This is an EXCEPTIONAL type 1 reading!!

The same goes for the set closing YEM!! Definitely a must hear version, they set the building on fire abd and send everyone in a 50 mile radius to the burn unit.

Good encore of an average Velvet Sea into a KILLER First Tube

All in all, another incredible show!! It currently has a nearly 4.6 rating on .NET but as a whole Id give it like a 4.2 or 4.3. The 2nd set kicks ass through the end but after Tweezer is mostly just a string of "REALLY excellent type 1" kinda versions.

I definitely strongly prefer set 2 of night 1 and think that set is stronger, easily. But its all splitting hairs. This is an exceptional show from start to finish, period.
 

 

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