Wow, this is up early, considering daylight savings and all. All I can say is I am SO glad I went last night! I only had tickets for the other nights, but Best Buy let me and a guest in last night for free after complaining about Thursday's slow entrance on their FB page. Go figure...
From the outset it was going to be a good night. Bucket is not something you hear too often from Furthur, and the energy for the first few songs was great, except maybe Big River. During Cucamonga, it started to become apparent that they were trying really hard tonight with the jams. Morning Comes was another pleasant surprise, not having heard it since last spring. Then came the Abbey Road song of the night, the much anticipated Here Comes the Sun. They pulled it off beautifully, vocals, time changes and all, but the jam was the key, as this was when the band really started getting weird in high gear. Coming out of the song there was a very brief Greatest Story reprise, then a Supplication tease, then all of a sudden they are into an instrumental SSDD! This leads back into Supplication, which it becomes obvious they're going to see through, and go on to finish the Lazy Lightnin' "coda". Then BACK into SSDD, and end the set with a flawless Cross-Eyed, the best I've seen them do. WTF?! Just when you thought all their first sets were going to be an 8-song affair, they completely blow you out of the water with something like this.
Second set expectations were high, but they toned things down a bit with a Wheel opener that set the tone for the rest of the set. Then come a string of Mountain songs (it used to be rivers, mountains are cool too), with beautiful backing vocals from Sunshine and Jeff on Magnolia, and some very strange and far-out in-between verse jams during Mountains of the Moon (which is still a little fast for my taste). Phil's timing with the vocals was spot on, and it was obvious he was having a great night, as was the whole band. A quick twist and they were into Uncle Johns', which got the crowd happier than they'd been all night, with a climactic singalong moment for the acapella chorus. Rider was also super-charged, and I was happy to see them bring it down with Stella. I was wondering what the hell came next, and thought it was just 10-15 minutes of pure techno/house, but now I see there was some method to the madness. I had heard about this when they played it last year on the same day, which was Phil's birthday show. It was the most stupendous jamming I have heard from this band yet.
Unfortunately, I had a bus to catch at 12:10, so I did not in fact wait for the Midnite Hour, and started disentangling myself and gathering my stuff. When they started Touch at 11:35, I knew there would be two encores, but I banked that it would probably be Sat Nite (not that there's anything wrong with that), and decided it was more important to catch the bus.
A fantastic show that showed me Furthur's taking it to a whole other level I didn't know they were capable of - on the strength of the playing alone, it would have to be among the top two shows I've seen from them, and I'm looking forward to see what they have left for tonight. So once again, thank you Best Buy! Well worth the wait in the rain on Thursday...
Jose, bayonne
Excellent review and thanks for the heads-up, Jose, wasn't there personally at the show but just finished listening to the stream and this was as well-played as the set list was exciting. They delivered the musical goods, that's for sure. Good stuff and John K was all over it though this was a solid band effort thru and thru. Catching them tonight (Sunday) and Tuesday, can't wait...:-smile!
Peace,
Alex
Alex, Sunnyside, Queens, NY
