SET 1:

Emotional Rescue: What a surprise! This jam has great length and substance. It adopts the theme of fall 97 for much of it – heavily dominated by funk with no one member stepping up to take control, a four headed beast. But, in the early minute range things start ramping up as Trey plays with a redundant theme. Trey elicits a visceral reaction from the crowd with a peak that comes in like a big wave around 12:50 – powerful. The last three minutes of the jam are filled with tons of effects that surely would have torqued the reality helmets of even the most experience psychedelic veterans >

Split Open and Melt: This jam for me, is pretty underrated. I especially appreciate all the dissonance employed starting around 10:45 – this ramps up the intensity. They really take their time with the ending – it’s a screamer.

Beauty of My Dreams: Standard.

Dogs Stole Things: Standard.

Punch You in the Eye: They had the crowd eating out of their hands during this. ->

Lawn Boy: LOL at the anti-drum solo. >

Chalk Dust Torture: The third verse of Chalk Dust Torture was omitted by Trey, oops!

Prince Caspian: The ending of this one is very anti-climactic as they delay loop the ending of Caspian played until after lights were brought back up. Kind of strange way to end the set.

SET 2:

Ghost: Extremely mellow version up until 11:55 when things get evil with a hard edge. This doesn’t last too long as they delve into some funk, some brief hose at 13:52 and about 55 seconds later this slides nicely into… >

AC/DC Bag: This jam has it all. It really was the pre-cursor to the King of all versions, 12.30.97, you can certainly hear elements of that MSG version here in the Hampton version – specifically in the late 9-minute range. Check it out and you will hear what I am talking about. Not long after this there is a beautiful ambient passage that they employ. By the fifteen-minute range Trey has seemingly grown tired of taking a backseat and ramps up into some hard charging arena rock. This gets exceptionally noisy, almost messy in the late 17’s and into the 18’s. The next 4 minutes they takes us into deep space, way out there and very sparse and ambient. The next two minutes get very intense as they rock out hard – specifically using some of those crunchy sounds that were a signature from summer 97. The last minute they basically turn it over to Page as he puts together some beautiful runs on the baby grand and then a well-crafted segue into Slave ->

Slave to the Traffic Light: Outstanding version. Trey is amazing in the 9’s and then in the early 10’s with very pretty trilling. Fishman really pushes Trey in the last minute for more. What a thing of beauty. An easy all timer.

Loving Cup: Standard.

ENCORE:

Guyute: Standard.

Summary: The start of the first set is insane – over thirty minutes of amazing jamming. They were not looking to maintain that intensity though and the back half of the set is much more down to earth. Second set is a rare four song romp. Decent Ghost to get us going, and then an epic Bag and Slave. Wow! The current rating of 4.612/5 (489 ratings) is right on the money as far as I’m concerned. This tour just keeps delivering incredible highlights!

Replay Value: Emotional Rescue, Split Open and Melt, AC/DC Bag, Slave to the Traffic Light