The show started off great with a killer "Good Lovin'". The only other show I have seen on this tour is Alpine, and just as my luck would have it, they played almost the exact same set listat Riverport as they did at Alpine. I got over it though, because the show sounded so sweet. Hopefully, as the Other Ones progress, they will mix up the songs enough so that they won't repeat an entire sequence of songs, or in this case, almost the whole show. With that in mind, the highlight for me was when the brought out St. Louis legend Johnny Johnson to sit in and jam on Hornsby's grand piano for a while. JJ is truly an awe- some piano player, and Hornsby seemed to be loving it. Then they busted out LL Rooster for the first time on this tour. Man, it's a little harsh on the ears when Bobby gets out the slide and gets way up into the Megahertz, but his intonation was actually quite good. It seemed that Riverport curfew cause the show to abruptly end at 11PM, immediately after lovelight. An encore would have been nice, but Saint Steven> 11> Lovelight is awesome! Phil was great on Saint Steven and box, but I wasn't to hip on his version of Half-step. Maybe that is just one of those songs that doesn't go over too well without ol' Jer, or maybe they need to let Bruce take a shot at it. Bruces piano on Preacher was just totally intense. Other than some of the true great pianists of Jazz such as McCoy Tyner, Bruce is musically speaking the best there is, and a whole hell of a lot of fun to listen to otherwise. Hot Tuna jammed their fucking nuts off as usual, and really got the crowd into it with Dead standards Walkin' Blues and Big RR Blues. I was hoping they would bust out a Big River, being St. Louis and all,but it didn't happen. I hope they play a different set list the next time I seethem. Maybe after a few more gigs, the pre-planned set list will go away. The nice thing about the Alpine show was that the crowd was so very cool, and the scene there was so "dead". Dare I say it, but there are more "real" deadheads at Alpine than at Riverport, and plus the scenery is better at Alpine, and the security at Riverport is totally red. There is really no "scene" at Riverport. You just go in, see the show, and go back to where you came from. If you want to hang out and make it like a dead show, you have to be prepared to deal with security dicks and such. On the other hand, Riverport is much nicer on the inside. It's way easier to use the facilities and get a drink and so forth. Although the set lists were similar, the energy at Alpine was higher, and this was mainly attributed to the scene before the show, and also the killer Dark Star> Jack Straw that opened the show.
Bill Frank, Milwaukee, WI