Review: moe. Halloween, Albany.

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The moon lit the evening sky, as a mass of people lurked out in front of the Washington Square Armory. The energy was high, and the excitement was clear. Entering the castle-like venue it was it became apparent that it was going to be a packed house, and sweltering hot. Upon passing through security, the lobby opened up to what appeared to be a large gymnasium. The house lights dimmed, the stage lit up and out came moe dressed in skeleton costumes. Approxamately two and a half weeks after their last show (due to tour/date cancellations) moe came out heavy.

The first couple of songs sounded good, with some good guitar work and a tease of what was to come in the light show. Then the song "Farmer Ben"... This song provided some rapping as well as a bummer of a vibe for the crowd, who was left looking around in confusion. Following up that mess was a version of Paul Simon's "Call Me Al". This was one of the songs on the fan based setlist voting that I did not really want to hear, but turned out sounding really good, and the crowd dug it. The first beast of the show came when they played "George" taking it through twenty plus minutes of wailing, dance and space. This was the first point in the show that the crowd went absolutely nuts.

The highlight of the show for me was the "Echos (Pink Floyd), Stash (Phish), Meat, Eyes of the World (Grateful Dead)>Echos, Rebubula>Darkstar (Grateful Dead)>Rebubula" This core section of the show really made it for me. It was great to hear moe cover a Phish song and jam it out harder than Phish. My level of excitement shot through the roof when they broke into the song that I voted on for the set; "Eyes". I was a little unsure of how it would sound coming from moe, but it had the same sweet, mellow, flowing vibe that the Dead created. The Rebubula was uber beastly and the crowd was extremely responsive. Then to go into "Darkstar right after playing "Eyes" caught me off guard, yet pleased me to the extreme. Finishing the segment with Rebubula...

For the encore moe came back out and played a version of Tenacious D's "Fuck Her Gently". For an encore, it was completely awful. A lot of the younger bro'ed out cats were really into it and screaming the words at the top of there lungs... Quite a mess. They then played "Don't Fuck With the Flow", which had a very swing/jammy grove. The encore's saving grace was "Crab Eyes" which left everybody wide-eyed, and completely killed.

Overall I thought the show was on. I thought the covers were well done, and the peaks were excellent. My main complaints were with the venue. They ran out of water after the third song, and by set-break were completely out of all water, Gatorade, and any sort of beer/alcohol. They were completely unprepaired, understaffed, and ended up putting a lot of people at risk for dehydration. This could have been a serious problem, and looking around I saw several people struggling to not pass out. It was extremely irresponsible.



Rating: 4 out of 5.

moe's Halloween show: moe. Halloween, Albany

-J-man

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