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It's that time of the year again when my wifey, and I attend our yearly Dave Matthews Band summer concert.

This year's Phoenix DMB show at Cricket Pavilion was much later in the year than previous years, and we lucked out with some awesome weather (clear and 85).

I won't give you a minute by minute account of the entire show, but I will say that we had a great time (as usual.) No matter what, they're still a lot of fun to see live.

Stephen Marley opened up for DMB. They were a lot of fun. Typically Reggae music with a few Bob Marley tunes thrown in the mix.

A few observations about the show:

• They have a bunch of "new" songs. Some are pretty good, but most will probably take a bit to grow on me. I'm hoping the new recordings of these songs don't sound as produced as some of their new stuff.
• I think it goes without saying, but the band is tight. I've been listening to them live long enough to be able to pick up on the queues in the songs for transitions and other jams.
• Their stage set has typically been somewhat simple, but they've upgraded to some crazy lighting designs and background screens. I guess there's more money to spend on tours now.
• Stephen Marley's band consisted of about 7-10 people. One guy's job throughout the entire show was to wave a Jamaican flag. He waved it like no other. He waved it, twirled it, spun it. When ever music was playing, his job on the stage was to wave the flag. I wonder how he got that sweet job! (I can imagine my version of the original conversation, but someone my explanation won't do it justice.)

The best part about the show were our seats. I was a dope and forgot to preorder my tickets through the Warehouse. So I had to try and order tickets through Ticketmaster.

My first attempt gave me tickets that were literally all the way stage left half way up the 200 level. We had the first and second seat in the row. They were kinda far over. So I tried again. This time Ticketmaster gave me tickets that were in the first row of the 200 section, but fairly far stage-right.

Being in the first row, there's no seats in front of you. That also means no cup holders for your drinks. We had a walkway that separated the 100 and 200 level seats right in front of us. We found that we did a lot more people watching, and sometimes it was slightly distracting from the show.

Overall a good time...

Highlight: "Ants Marching" closing the main set and a cover of "Blackwater" (we had already left and heard it from the parking lot).

Once again, another awesome DMB show!

Labels: concert, Dave Matthews Band, Stephen Marley

posted by jame1030 at 11:00 PM |   |  1 comments  |  links to this post