Monday, July 3, 2006

7/1/06, GRAB (and Phil Lesh), PNC (Garden State) Arts Center, Holmdel, NJ

you know what's great? i've noticed that less people read my concert reviews than read my inane ramblings. what's worse? what does that say about me? but more importantly, what does that say about YOU?

regardless. after picking up the affable lauren simms and forcing her to go to amish market with me, we headed down the parkway to exit 117- the (pnc) garden state arts center. once there, parked and baked in the hot hot sun. oh, and drank beers. some guys pulled into the spot across from us and proceeded to play God Street Wine's '$1.99 Romances'. it was a good spot. it was a really good spot.

we slowly made contact with the people we were meeting up with in various stages of travel. what made things a little difficult is that we just missed out on parking in the first lot- so i didn't get to park anywhere near: mattypie or 4dice. however, we were in the same lot as loughrey and we were able to snag the spot next to ours and reserve it for brett and his friend zeke. when they finally showed up (something about getting lost and ending up in camden- sounds fun, eh?) brett pulled a sandwich about the size of his forearm out of a cooler and ate the whole damn thing. for fun we put some meat on the pavement to see if it would frizzle. it started to sweat.

eventually loughrey lumbered over to us and... well, first we drank more... and then we motivated to walk over to the main lot, but by the time we got there everybody wanted to go in. unfortunately i didn't get to hear any of the benevento russo duo set, but i did see them at moe.down a few years ago and they were great. also, it doesn't hurt that both the guys are hot. joe russo actually kinda looks like mike ouweleen. dorks unite!

they were selling daquiris & margaritas for $8 and something called "the guitar" for $13. it looked like a twist of the two. i had a lemon italian ice for $4. we climbed up the stairs and found a nice spot on the lawn. phil lesh was playing. meh. joan osborne sang. that only made me angry. there were a *lot* of deadheads in the crowd. like, a **lot** of them.

but then, the set i went to see- GRAB. mike Gordon, joe Russo, trey Anastasio, & marco Benevento. i was really hoping to see a mixture of phish tunes, trey tunes, and sick jams. trey basically apologized upfront and said, "thanks for being patient with the new tunes". so, yeah, we got a nice tease for a little bit but i don't think he played any full phish tunes? i can't remember. mike sounded great. and the B&R were awesome too. they did some great harder jamming, they are definitely still learning to play together, but it was a fun set. some of the spacier trey tunes were a little lame- but altogether, way better than any of the trey solo shows i've seen in years. (the tsunami benefit doesn't count, that was a moe. show- trey was a special guest).

so, altogether- maybe 7 HUZZAHS? i dunno. i was somehow expecting more. to be blown away maybe.

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