Listening to Every Show I've Been To In Chronic Order

Umphrey's Discussion
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Hey guys! I’ve been wanting to come back here and catch up with the homies but I just haven’t felt like I’ve had much to say. But I just started a rerun of every show I’ve ever been to (out of 358 as of this message) and after discovering some interesting stuff, I decided to make a thread sharing my observations.

This project will take several years and I’ll probably abandon it and reboot it several times. I’ll be skipping some stuff for reasons that will hopefully be forgivable when it happens. I will share musical insights, personal highlights, and some of my personal story to the extent that I feel comfortable posting it!

Also not sure exactly how I want to format it. For now each show will be its own post in this topic.

This is the paragraph where I should probably write how I originally got into UM but I don’t feel like writing that right now so I’ll fill it in later

Next: Chicago 12/30/09

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If this was PT I’d make a mock thread, “Listening To Every Show I’ve Been To On Chronic”….which would be 90% of them I think.

Looking forward to the evolution of this project and reading your insights brah!

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Set 1:Push the Pig[1] → Miss Tinkle’s Overture, Got Your Milk (Right Here) > 2x2, All Night Long[2], Resolution[3]

Set 2:Wappy Sprayberry → Spires > Hangover, Made to Measure[4], Lady Madonna[5], Higgins[6] > Wappy Sprayberry > Bright Lights, Big City

Encore:All In Time

I didn’t listen to this show because I’ve listened to it so much that I can write a review cold. Actually the relisten started with me listening to my first new years show 12/31/09 and I went forward from there. This is a great show though, especially the first set. Tinkle’s is my favorite song and this is a great version, though the version that really made it my favorite was 3/12/10 which we’ll get into soon.

For several years this was my best Hangover. It builds up and even gets into an intense little double time peak. The real highlight of the show (which I didn’t appreciate at the time) is the 2x2 funk jam, the song clocking in at like 24 minutes. I appreciated the Made to Measure > Lady Madonna, and the Higgins is funny with Jake singing “Start Me Up!” which doesn’t sound anything like the Rolling Stones song. Wappy has no jam but both transitions are cool. Mad Dog conducting Resolution was very memorable.

I attended this show solo extremely drunk, having drank a full cheap bottle of wine which I opened by cutting up the cork with a butterknife (no opener) so I was picking out shards of wood out of the wine as I drank it. After the show there was somebody selling mushrooms at the Lawrence red line stop and I bought some and ate them but they were bunk as hell. I played World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King before and after the show. Yeah the personal story is pretty weak on this one but the next night will make up for it.

I remember thinking Joel looked very old. Like older than he actually looks even now.

Next: Chicago New Years 12/31/09

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that would essentially be the same thread, at least until 2/4/15 my first show on probation

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I’ve tried to do this before but got sidetracked and I had way less shows to relive

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This is top-tier way to experience wine

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I’m not marathoning or anything. I just finished 3/13/10 and it took me 3 days to listen to that one. P much whenever I feel like listening to music but can’t decide what to listen to, I’ll resume this playthrough from wherever I’m at. With the 3 days per show rate, this will take about 3 years, so realistically probably 3-5 years

The rough part will be when I get to 2014-2015

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Set 1:Cemetery Walk > The Triple Wide, Divisions, Red Tape[1], Headphones & Snowcones[2], Mulche’s Odyssey

Set 2:Catshot[3], Hajimemashite, Ringo[1], The Skunk, The Goose, and The Fly[1], Bridgeless > Ocean Billy, Move Your Rug[4], Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out[5] > Bridgeless

Set 3:Much Obliged[6] > Auld Lang Syne[1], Hurt Bird Bath, Gulf Stream, Phil’s Farm, Turn & Dub[7], Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You[8], Cemetery Walk II

Encore:1348, Reelin’ in the Years[9]

I missed the first set of this show - didn’t even realize it until days later, since I walked in during set break and saw two full sets and an encore so it felt like a full show. Triple Wide jam is probably the highlight of the set. I didn’t appreciate what it meant to miss Headphones & Snowcones and I caught it twice in 2013 anyway. But this was the first time played with Myers, 2nd time played ever, and featured Mirro on marimba.

Six Man Keyboard Jam (which is how it’s titled on nugs, on ATU they count it as a Catshot jam which is funny because Catshot didn’t actually have a name yet) was probably my most listened part of this show immediately after. Really blew me away and then Haji directly after is great contrast UM. Move Your Rug was also a lot of fun, New Orleans style jazz written by Mad Dog which sounds more like the music I played in high school than nearly anything else UM has played since then. Bridgeless and Ocean Billy stuck with me after this show even though neither had improv.

The third set is probably one of the best NYE 3rd sets I’ve seen (which includes 2009-2018 and 2024). Much Obliged, HBB, and Phil’s are all huge songs to see for the first time and they all delivered on the jam front. I loved Stasik singing Frankie Valli and I grooved super hard with the CWII jam, having discovered UM in the year of the Mantis.

I feel like I’ve seen so many Reelin’ In the Years’, but my count for that one is 4.

Like the previous night, I went to this show solo, but instead of drinking a full bottle of wine I just had a hit of L. My degenerate college friends were in town from the suburbs for NYE but I was the only one who went to UM. Another friend (the one who introduced me to UM) went to Pretty Lights and our other friends went to some show at Portage Theater since UM and PL were sold out. I took the dose while I was with them before the show, then we all went out separate ways and I tripped my face off near the front of the Aragon. I was too inexperienced to appreciate how much the Aragon sucks which was all for the better. It was definitely an intense experience though, but made everything so much more memorable. I was starting to really become hooked and I listened to this show many times immediately afterward (I bought the livedownloads as this was pre-nugs). It still took Minneapolis in March and Summercamp in May to fully form my obsession but this new years show was the beginning.

After the show I took the red line back up to Loyola, and the Lawrence red line stop was an absolute shit show after an UM NYE show (its steps away from the Aragon so naturally the show crowd moves there). One train came by and the doors opened but it was full to the max so the crowd waited for the next one. At some point somebody fell on the ground and was vomiting up unicorn colors. Somebody next to him said “that’s all alcohol.” There was a huge crew of wooks, like 20+ people all together that got on the train with me so it felt like I was still at the show when I was on the train home. Then they all got off at the same stop as me and kept walking in the same direction, because it turned out they were going to a party in a different apartment in my building.

I was the first one to get back, then I think the Portage crew came after, and the guy at Pretty Lights came last. We listened to Shpongle and everybody else did MDMA but I was taking SSRIs which nullify the effects of MDMA so I just continued to trip and smoke weed, which was the main thing we smoked to get high in 2009 and 2010.

Whew! Feels good to be done with that one

Next: Minneapolis 3/12/10

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Oh hey! I remember this

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cuz that was when we met! Looking forward to reminiscing on it in like 2 years when we get there lol!

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lol cannot wait!! Hope you’re well dude!

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We later that year drove straight from Charlotte to Orlando together. There’s no oil in the Middle East remember

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they’re fighting over the wrong kind of oil! i’ve been meaning to text ya back BTW but I’ve been super lazy lmao we should catch up soon though. I wanna come to Georgia sometime this year

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All good man! Let’s go to 420 fest together. I’ll get your tickets

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ooooh that could work! ill check out the logistics

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Always free to stay with us. Let’s touch base later

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Set 1:Spires > The Linear > Mulche’s Odyssey, Much Obliged > Hajimemashite > Glory > Hajimemashite, Hurt Bird Bath

Set 2:Professor Wormbog, Booth Love[1], Cemetery Walk II > Making Flippy Floppy[2], Gulf Stream > Miss Tinkle’s Overture → Masoko Tanga > Miss Tinkle’s Overture > Masoko Tanga[3] → Miss Tinkle’s Overture

Encore:Got Your Milk (Right Here)[4], Waiting Room[5]

Footnotes:
[1] with Get Up, Stand Up (Bob Marley & The Wailers) jam
[2] with Hella Good (No Doubt) teases and Can’t You Hear Me Knocking (The Rolling Stones) jam
[3] with Miss Tinkle’s Overture teases
[4] ended with Stranglehold (Ted Nugent) jam
[5] with Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring (Johann Sebastian Bach) tease

This is possibly my favorite show attended, almost certainly my most listened-to, and I skipped it this time because I know a lot of it note-for-note in my head and wanted to keep things moving. An interesting thing about this show is that it was almost all repeats from the previous 2 shows - the only new original songs for me were Mulche’s because I missed the first NYE set, Glory which I had yet to realize was it’s own song and not just the middle of Haji, Wormbog, and Linear/Booth Love both of which hadn’t been debuted yet at my last show. So I knew almost every song being played and I was able to get comfortable and lock in.

This was my first show at First Ave in Minneapolis, which is my most seen venue at 19 (16 at Three Sisters Park though I haven’t been there since 2016, then it’s Tabernacle at 15 and Riverside at 14). I grew up on the other side of the river in Saint Paul so this is essentially a hometown show (though I would be able to see some actual hometown Saint Paul shows in 2017 and 2018). It coincided with my spring break so I was able to come home and catch 3 shows in the location I was already planning on being anyway.

I have a self-inside joke that every show is your first show because every day you’re a different person than you were the day before, and you can always find some metric by which it’s your first show given that metric, so I’m going to figure out why every show is my first show. 12/30/09 was my actual first show, 12/31/09 was my first new years show, and this was my first Twin Cities show as well as first show at my most seen venue.

It’s just fire straight through. A tight 5 minute Spires and then a weird electronic cymbal sound starts happening which resolves into an EDM-y dance jam. Bayliss is at his most Bayliss, playing syncopated delays, and then halfway through the jam he starts a new section with a rock riff, which the band picks up and modulates through different keys as the jam reaches its peak. Then immediately drop into….

The Linear, which I think it its 2nd time with lyrics. Cool early version, no jam, right into Mulche’s Odyssey. Mulche’s had a cool little jam which was featured on The Floor blog where you could hear the band talking during the jam. Much Obliged jam gets heavy and Joel wails with the synth sounds, then there’s an iconic Haji > Glory > Haji, into a solid HBB. This segment was a lot like the Much Obliged > Auld Lang Syne > HBB that I saw at the previous show and HBB was an early favorite (still love it).

Second set might be even better. Professor Wormbog jam was a sequel to the 12/31/09 Phil’s Farm hip-hop jam (same bass line, maybe other stuff). CW2 was hot, what is there to say about MFF, Gulf Stream took me back to new years again, and Miss Tinkles > Masoka Tanga > Tinkles absolutely did and still does blow my mind. It’s just so brilliant and it’s very well executed in this version. This was not Masoka Tanga’s debut, but it was its first time played in Tinkles, where it would continue to be played a few more times within Tinkles and Higgins. This made Tinkles my favorite song by any band which it still is, and for my 300th show in Saint Paul in 2018 I requested the same Tinkles / Masoka mashup and got it.

I left after Tinkles to catch the last bus home since it was like 12:45 AM, so I missed a standard Milk (which I had already seen on 12/30/09) and Waiting Room which I would see many more times including the very same venue.

Like the previous show, I went solo with a head full of one hit of L which I had saved from moe. in Chicago the week before. I had a very intense and engaged experience, uncomfortable tripping my face off alone in a crowd but also completely blown away by the music so I would learn to become comfortable. I went home to my mom’s house and stayed up past sunrise listening to Penn’s Peak 2009.

Next: Minneapolis 3/13/10

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Set 1:Prowler > In The Kitchen, Cemetery Walk > Pay the Snucka > Atmosfarag > Resolution[1] > In The Kitchen, That’s All > Pay the Snucka

Set 2:Preamble > Mantis > Wappy Sprayberry > Night Nurse[2] > Wappy Sprayberry[2] > Mantis, The Fussy Dutchman, Push the Pig, Steppin’ Razor > Ocean Billy > Plunger > Kula > Plunger > Ocean Billy

Encore:Alex’s House[2], 1348

Footnotes:
[1] with Norwegian Wood (The Beatles) jam and Rock Your Body (Justin Timberlake) teases
[2] with Kevin Sinclair on saxophone

I stayed up past sunrise listening to Penn’s Peak 09, discovering Alex’s House for the first time (that version is still the best ever, huge peak). So this was my first show where I was tired from doing L the previous night and getting little sleep. It was also my first show attended with a crew, which included my friend Alex, my sister and the dad of her first kid (who was 11 months old and chilling with my mom). We pregamed at Alex’s House, so this show was attended very drunk, much like my first show 12/30/09. I bought Alex his ticket, and I ran in to him at the next year’s First Avenue show with a friend who he had bought a ticket for.

The show is not that great and there is very little notable improv. Kitchen is probably the most significant jam. Resolution has one of the first Norweigan Wood jams. There are a few interesting highlights. I really enjoyed it because I was with a crew, very drunk, and seeing a lot of originals for the first time. Only repeats were Resolution, Pig, Billy and 1348. I had never heard Snucka before and part 3 did the face melting. That’s All became a favorite cover and often played track.

I noticed something new for the first time listening to this today which is what caused me to create this thread because I wanted to be able to share stuff like this. That’s All has a 2 minute jam which isn’t too interesting, but it does contain Bayliss playing some of Fenced In. In 2015 at First Avenue he would play a different part of Fenced In during the Spires jam after the Speak Up lyrical stew. In 2020 George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police, and in 2022 Umphrey’s McGee debuted Fenced In, which contains lyrics about Bayliss’ reflections on George Floyd’s murder and the protests of 2020.

My first Mantis, and this Mantis → Wappy transition is actually really unique and noteworthy. It’s a “2nd split” (right before “had you thought about it”) and Stasik starts the Wappy bassline during Jake’s Mantis solo so there’s an overlap where Mantis and Wappy are both happening, then it continues into Wappy. One of the most Biscuits things they’ve ever done.

Wappy had a Night Nurse jam, which wasn’t named Night Nurse at the time, and one of the first ones. The Mantis > Wappy > Mantis segment is the highlight of the set. The only improv of the set (besides Night Nurse) is in Pig and isn’t worth writing home about. It is interesting that the set contains two three-part palindromes, though I skipped the second one on my listen because nothing interesting happens in it. My first Plunger and technically my first Plunger outro, though it didn’t have a jam, just went right into the end of Billy after the composed part. I wouldn’t see a real Plunger outro jam for years.

Alex’s House was one of those “oh shit, what are the chances” moments since I had discovered the song the night before, and I was with Alex, whose House I had pregamed at.

I basically already told anything worth telling on the personal side so I’ll end here. This is as far as I’ve listened so it’ll be a few days before I write more.

Next: 3/14/10, then the first UMBowl

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Can’t wait for some of these! 1/30/16 comes to mind…

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Good to see a familiar name back on the boards, OP

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