oooh, was i excited when this show was announced!!! lowell hadn't seen moe. since high school (wetlands era), so he took my extra. that's back in the day when they still played "ugly american". when we got there he looked up and said, "they added a 5th guy?" (it's been a while is my point). annnd marty told me to remind him 2 weeks before the show- which i did and that worked out well, cuz then marty and lowell and i went to see moe. friday 3/7 at the palace theater in albany, ny. the last time i was at the palace was for the rock the vote / "looking for answers?" <-- yes, a question mark! (<-- exclamation point) tour that featured: ominous seapods, moe., yolk, and moon boot lover (oh man, if that tour had a reunion... i'd rock all 4 nights.). that's right: classic north country rock ala 1996. ahh, the wonderful clinton years... siiigh... i just died a little bit inside.
anyways, it was absolutely shit-storming the whole day and the drive up to albany took extra time due to the fucking monsoon hitting the entire hudson valley. i don't typically have bad road experiences (knocking on wood) but i completely lost sight of the road twice and thought i might die. WIND + RAIN + tractor trailers doing 60 in the right lane = awesome. i got to schenectady and marty and i chilled for a couple of minutes before heading back to albany, swinging by lowell's, and going downtown to find parking. good fun. we ended up missing the first 10 minutes of the show, no big deal. i was psyched to be there. lowell's face lit up like a med student eyeing a fresh corpse*. marty was blown away by the sound, perfectly mixed for the room. it really did sound amazing! the crowd was chill and chock full of overwhelmingly warm north country vibes. al gave a speech about how amazing it is to play in albany and how special the night was, it was adorable. :) i totally felt the love. it was a thrill to see them rocking the hell out of a sold out show at the palace.
okay, enough of that hippie sap. i'm still getting used to a lot of the new songs, a couple are starting to grow on me. it was weird to get an album of brand new moe. songs. did anyone else find that amusingly jarring? what impresses me the most is that sticks and stones is only 41 minutes long! the SINGLE for meat was 45 minutes! my mind has been blown! cathedral was nice and pretty and to replace my praise for each song and how great they sounded let's say it was a SOLIDLY ROCKIN' first set! the new backdrops are gorgeous and the lightshow is the perfect compliment to all of it. EFFFIN AWESOME, man. it was like, i was in HACKNEY. you know, in my MIND. everyone was on fire!!! vinnie was a force to be reckoned with, jim was ballistic, chuck was WAILING- jesus christ, CHUCK IS ON FIRE and there is NO STOPPING IT!!!! i fucking swear, he gets better every time i see him!!! it's evil!!! CHUCK IS SATAN.
during set break marty called happy lopez and to our surprise he was standing like 4 rows in front of us in the aisle... HA! shortly thereafter pat came by to say hello- and each of them yelled at us to go to valentine's afterwards to see raisinhead and lynch... i don't know what marty was thinking, but i was like... wow. do we kick this old skool or what? 4am closing time? lowell was on-call in the morning so he had no choice... but what would we do?
set II started off with a bang- crab eyes (AWESOME) building slowly into a screaming spaz rx! but HOLY SHIT. one of my favorite new songs- QUEEN OF EVERYTHING. what an AWESOME classic rock song. rob fucking BELTED this song out, it was a sick sick sick version- WOW, i am so excited to see what happens with this song in the future! it's the new "whipping post" or "why does love got to be so sad?" you don't think i mean that, but i do.
queen went into bullet to finish it back from set I. then they sank into rebubula and i was in heaven just soaking it in. marty rolled his eyes and told me that i was "being all dreamy on rob". well, so what if i was? he's dreamy.
then i was slightly traumatized when rebubula -> plane crash. in the words of nancy kerrigan-- "WHYYYYYY???? NOOOOOOO!!!!!! WHYYYYYYY???" so, i went to pee.
it took them a while to come back out for the encore but the reason was probably cuz they are bringing up handfuls of fans to sing backup on 'raise a glass' for part of this tour which i would venture to guess was al's idea (skippy looked like he was having a heart attack- i can't believe he has to do that every night) but i could be wrong- anyone know? some guy in an orange t shirt was going nuts up there and we couldn't stop laughing. the song is great, i love a good irish ditty to wrap up the night. they did september which is kind of ballad-y and i was really hoping they didn't end with it because it really brought the energy level down, i might wanna hear that in the middle of a set instead. i turned to marty and said, "this better go back into rebubula..." he laughed. and then after a little while... i heard the first tease and YAAAY, they were going back into rebubula! happy girl! that's all it takes! and with a balls out rockin' jam and the entire room singing along they wrapped up an amazing show.
um. well, marty and i dropped off lowell and we ALLLLMOST went to valentine's but we totally pussied out. we went to get pizza instead. happy called us and we couldn't understand a word he was saying, but it was probably just him calling us from valentine's to call us pussies.
9 HUZZAHS! the band is so tight and it's truly an amazing feeling to watch them get better with age. the 5 of them pull shit out from who knows WHERE and it continually rocks my socks off. the music always has a point- it's an adventure at every turn. together with the lights and the sound mix (the moe.down crew replacement-jam was one of the best replacement-jams EVER, btw), it's a dream team. i fucking love moe.!
setlist:
SET I
Not Coming Down- >
Wormwood ->
Cathedral
Bullet ->
Okayalright
Down Boy ->
George
SET II
Crab Eyes ->
Spaz Rx
Wind it Up
Queen Of Everything ->
Bullet
Rebubula ->
Plane Crash ->
Drums ->
Plane Crash
E:
Raise A Glass
September ->
Rebubula
download or stream the show from archive!!! if you're not going to listen to the whole thing, i recommend streaming "queen of everything", it's fucking ROCKING.
http://www.archive.org/details/moe.2008-03-07.flac16_mk4
*and then he went on and on about how amazing jim is and what kind of element he adds. JIMMMAAAY!
slideshow- fancy!
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