5/28/02 Review
Click Here For the Setlist
Well, it's been almost 18 months since Dave Matthews Band performed at MSG and as Dave put it after the first number, "a lot has happened" in that time. Of course, the band was in the Metropolitan Area last summer, but DMB at MSG is a unique experience in itself--maybe it's the consolidation of rampant potheads and horny Abercrombie fanatics indoors--so it should be considered separate from the Giants Stadium experience. The band doesn't go over the top at MSG, just does their thing, whereas in the bigger outdoor venues, there's a lot of reaching and grasping for something that just isn't there. Anyways, as for the show, the Everyday opener was nice, but not really rocking until they all bailed into #36 at the end with Dave encouraging the crowd to help him out with the #36 lyrics. Granny seemed too similar a place to go next--the everybody love one another gimmick--but it sort of solidified the atmosphere the band was looking for with the opener. When The World Ends was the song he played right after he talked about 9/11...I thought that was a bit strange. Butch Taylor gets too into that song. Grey Street was really amazing, producing a good amount of energy from the crowd. It was one of many songs throughout the night that Roi would own; he was the MVP tonight, though Carter made a late comeback. Carter's stick intro on You Never Know was pretty amazing, and the song in general has gotten tighter in the last month and a half. I think it could be something bigger than what it is, in the range of a "Lie In Our Graves," but the stuff that Dave's written in the last year tends to be short, sweet, to the point, but still amazingly beautiful. I Did It always follows YNK. I think IDI rocks live, though the "real" fans seem to sit down in protest ("Ugh, does he HAVE to do this," a fella sitting in my row grunted.) Song That Jane Likes pleased that jabroni and his feathered friend, of course. STJL is always great to hear live--it's funny that song itself is short, sweet, to the point, and beautiful as well, so Dave's songwriting has sort of come full circle if you think about it. The band did an extended intro here, a running theme throughout the night. Jimi Thing was where Boyd had his peak of the night, really owning the solo break. Dave did his little ditty too, one of a few priceless interactions with Stefan that would occur throughout the night. But, here's where Roi Night kicked in: the BEF-->Bartender sequence is pretty much all about Roi, and Bartender has totally evolved from the first time I heard it, on 7-13-00. It's just so loud and powerful; Roi again took over here. DMB setlists are predictable, and Dave had the electric on before Roi and Carter had even wrapped up Bartender, so What You Are was an easy call, but with an extended haunting intro, and that outro where he just goes nuts, it's become something else live. I know that you might be thinking, "did they play ANYTHING pre-2000?" with regards to this show at this point, but with the Everyday stuff, it seems like they play it this year with more purpose, to make it mean more (esp. What You Are and Everyday), to give it a new spin--along the lines of making the new album mostly Lillywhite stuff, just refining some stuff they might have missed. Sorry, Lover Lay Down is just a stupid excuse for lame couples who can't control themselves to get it on. Then again, Dave's transition from intense to sweet is priceless. But, right back to the intense with The Stone, which I thought was the dark horse of the night, so tight and intense, and where Carter started to realize the show was almost over and he wanted to get his two cents in. Fool To Think is just awkward, I don't know. There wasn't a need for it. Where Are You Going was nice, a signal that the set was about to close up, so something big was coming next, making the song merely a quiet moment to ponder where the band was going to go with its exit. Two Step, more so than Ants, makes any Dave crowd just, well, freak out. It's like people could walk outside the arena and just walk into traffic and die and be happy becuase they got to hear Two Step. Carter and Butch went at it here--so much so that Roi, Boyd, and Dave left the front of the stage to chill in the back with each other. That went on for a while longer than I thought it would. The song slowed to a crawl before Carter got it moving again. Encores are always fun. Dave came out and I was expecting Ain't It Funny, but he said something about how he was in the process of writing the song and he decided he would "give it a whirl." I thought when I was listening to K-Rock today at 3 he was playing the chords to this, so when I heard him go into "Gravedigger," I wasn't too surprised. He went on with about four minutes, so it's clear he's made a whole song out of it. Again, it's like a lot of his songwriting: short and to the point, and each verse has a certain story to it, progressing from the beginning of the 20th century to about 1992, so it's like Big Eyed Fish in that progression sense. He was singign pretty low in the beginning, but took it up high toward the end, bringing out the beauty of the chorus, "Gravedigger, when you build my grave, can you make it shallow so I can feel the rain?" As when it debuted as an outro on 4/26, it was a precursor to PNP-->Rapunzel. The band came out and went right into it. Unlike with Two Step, the band didn't belabor the point here, with Carter and Roi doing their thing in short order, and Dave really loosening up and dancing like a madman. He seemed a bit tense a lot of the night--something about New York maybe. So, that's how it went. My major comments are: a lot of good Roi-Carter and Dave-Stefan interaction, Butch Taylor uses strange body language, Boyd was great in the moments he was needed but didn't really do that much tonight, and it's good to have the band back in New York. Their theme tonight was the usual "look after one another," with a lot of stuff about love, but at the same time, the usual array of boisterous, soul searching material.
Email: TJ4141@aol.com
