07-02-97 Paradiso, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
1: Mike’s Song-> Simple-> Maze, Strange Design, Ginseng Sullivan, Vultures, Water in the Sky, Weekapaug Groove
2: Jam-> Stash-> Llama-> Worm Town Jam^-> Wading in the Velvet Sea
E1: Free*
E2: David Bowie
^A jam on “Swing Town” (Steve Miller tune) with dark vocals about “Back of the Worm” and worms in the canals of Amsterdam. *Band left stage after Free.
Wading is a weird closer for a show like this.
Anyway…my iPod cannot handle this Weekapaug. It freezes or shuts off, but only when I’m listening to this specific Weekapaug. Luckily it makes it through that laid back jam in the beginning, before they start Weekapaug proper.
This show definitely continues the weirdness started the night before. But, IMO, it all falls apart toward the end of the Stash. I guess you can only eat mushrooms for 3 days before you start to lose it. The Mike’s->Simple->Maze is fucking brilliant and the intro to Weekapaug is ultra-smooth.
I love the way the second set gets going and I love the Stash, but then the Llama is both waaaaaay too slow and waaaaaay too sloppy. I think Trey knows it by the middle of the jam because he just changes gears, though the rest of the band is not in sync with what he’s going. They try out that little “worm town” thing with ‘back of the worm’ chants but it honestly sounds kind of bad. Then they end the set with a terrible version of Velvet Sea that only loses out to the Coventry version of the worst version ever. It’s soooooo slow and just sounds plain bad. Every time I listen to this show I just feel like they spent one too many days in Amsterdam and were too tripped out to put shit together for the end of this set. I’m guessing at least Trey went backstage and grabbed a cup of coffee to clear his head a little bit because the Free is good and the Bowie is fucking spectacular. Overall the show is still really good, but there’s some awkwardness in the middle there.