1. “Flying Horses”
was mind blowing. The verse shifts in
the middle, the extra banjo beats, the band admitting it was the fastest they
had ever played the song……it was an out of body experience.
2. “Here We Go”
nearly topped it. The added slow-burn
intro, the added drum-jam middle, and the explosion at the end made my leg
shake. “Passerby” also benefitted from a
new mega-jam ending, “Bats” from a new Bongo solo, and "The General" from a new
“way yii yii” chorus.
3. Um, “Elias” was
not as good as last time. It was still
great obviously, and it’s cool that they dedicated the song to a family that
have fed them the past ten times they’ve come to DC. That said, it’s hard to match a twenty-person
Zimbabwean choir.
4. Ben Marzouk was
with me this time – that was a definite improvement. Seeing Ben enjoy it, especially the violin-driven
“Carry You,” added to the experience.
5. This time they
dedicated a song to me – well, all teachers actually, promoting the Amplifying
Education initiative: http://amplifyingeducation.org/
I appreciated the gesture and the funny intro (“thank you for sacrificing the
children”), but I wish they’d chosen a better song that “We Hold A Gun.”
6. The sound went out
during the first third of the show, and it was awesome. Irritating as it
was when the sound would drop out, it made it that much better when it
returned. It also built up a lot of
band-crowd unity, which was necessary after they started with a number of songs
from Circles Around The Sun, their
lackluster new album, don’t seem like they’re enough, so we're going to play a
game of dice and be right back. [The
sound comes back a second later.] Whoa,
that was a quick game.” From there, the
band had the audience sing the entire “Bang Bang,” invited individual audience
members on stage after the opener, Good Old Boys, had left, and finished “Two
Coins” with a stadium wave! Like I said,
awesome.
Grade: A
