moe. 02.02.08
Last night I saw moe. at the Electric Factory in Philadelphia, PA to a very sold out (over-sold) crowd.
moe. had this great idea, they released a new album of all “previously not played” songs on an album right before their tour. To some people this may be a “duh” kind of statement, but this is the jam-band community we’re talking about. In the jam-band community most artists appear to tour for touring sake regardless of when their albums are released. And since most artist are on the road so much new songs are constantly being tested, to the point of when you typically buy a new album you’ll already know the majority of the songs you’ll just want to hear the studio version. So for them to release a 10 song CD with of all new material and tour behind it becomes a new approach to things. This album is called “Sticks and Stones” and was produced by John Siket ala Phish’s “The Siket Disc”.
One of the promotions moe. had with this disc/tour was if you pre-ordered the CD in a certain two week span from their website they would include a pass (see above) to come up on stage during the encore as a guest singer to help sing the chorus of one of their new song “Raise a Glass”. What a great idea! Of course I ordered two CDs to get two passes so that whoever came to the show with me could come up on stage too. I gave the other CD and pass to Craig for his birthday since I new he was going up to the show too. The promotion was a great idea, period. Now the execution, well, let’s just say it was disappointing.
I arrived at the show and checked in at the merchandise table per the instructions that came with the pass. The guy tells me ‘sorry, but they don’t have anymore slots to fill, only the first 25 people get to go up.’ What!? They never said anything anywhere about only the first 25 people thing. Shit, if I would have known that I would have stood in line to get in when the doors opened instead of sitting out in my car drinking homebrew, beat. And just to rub salt in the wound, at the merch table they were selling the CD of course, well the CD was the same price as the pre-order CD and was autographed by the entire band. What!? So not only did I pay more for my CD (with shipping), not only did I get pissed on about going up on stage (think about it, how awesome would that have been to do that with one of your favorite bands), but I also got denied have my CD autographed … whatever.
After I got the yucky taste out of my mouth I thoroughly enjoyed the music. Even though Craig was there I went up by myself, so since I was solo I decided to stay on the floor and see how close I could get since it was a GA show. I got about three rows from the front between Rob and Al. It was jam packed in there and hot as hell, they don’t call it the Sweat Factory for nothing. By the time the band had reached maybe there third song and the audience shifted I wound up staying put more like at the eighth row back which was a little better actually. The music sounded great to me, but the idiotic people around me were driving me nuts; under-age, drunk, talking, and all up in your business – not cool. The encore thing with people up on stage went over like a freakin’ stone balloon, I’m glad it was suck a short song. I still would have liked to have done it, but it looked awkward for the band and the fans on stage.
Setlist: Set 1: head. > Darkness > St. Augustine > Good Trip > Spaz Medicine, The Pit > head.
Set 2: Jazzwank > Timmy Tucker > Can’t Seem To Find, Deep This Time > Gone, September > Buster, E: Raise A Glass, Faker > Timmy Tucker
Here’s a copy of the show if you wish to download it.