Worst year def 2022. No improv at all.
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Not much different than 2021
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Wait for it
I might have to walk back the OP after listening to @cryan024 ‘s playlist! Love me some 2009 jams!
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Yea, cant be letting people trash '09 while claiming whatever the hell it is they do now days is great.
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I remember contemporary consensus was '09 was relatively weak, both because '06-'08 was so hot and it was the Mantis release.
Is 2009-02-14 the best '09 show?
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man, i really liked the shows i saw in 2009
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There was just a lot of new material for the first time in years so people were turned off.
It is better than the vast majority of the modern years, and in terms of patience and jams it is miles above what they do now.
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2011 feels like the major shift in approach, every show I went to up until then seemed to prioritize patient, exploratory jams as a part of each night. Ever since, it’s felt like tighter, shorter jams are the main approach, and the monsters feel more often than not to be left by the wayside.
I’d still contend that, given how tight and dialed in UM is as a collective, a long UM jam is almost guaranteed to hit exactly what I’m looking for in improv, whereas a long Phish/Bisco/other lengthy jam might be more noodly + hit-or-miss.
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Yea, if anything they were right up there with phish/biscuits, which is why i have seen them over 200 times.
Just sucks that you get as many or more long jams from those two from a single run as you get from UM in an entire year.
I am with you, though, cant think of many 20+ minute versions of any UM song that i cant find at least something to enjoy
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10/3/09
I love that Valentine’s Day show. That whole run was a blast
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I only saw 27 shows in 2009 but 10.7.09 was the best one I saw that’s in my top five all time and I was 100% sober at that show.
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That’s a good one for sure, but had a lot of MW attendance bias. There were a few good (Always) October shows, too.
I still go to bat for 4/3/09 (NE attendance bias noted.) No Mantis songs until the encore and good hams in Roulette, Alex’s → Mulche’s (before dub jams were implied), Crooked > N2Fprise, Phil’s, and Ringo IIRC.
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song selection is fantastic but the second set is really weak for 2/14/09 IMO
All in Time gets credit for being one of the longest UM jams but it’s really just the longest ending section of AiT (11:00 IIRC) with a couple minutes of crowd noise at the end. The rest of the set makes it seems like they blew their entire load on that opener.
plus midwest bias like you said, that shit was strong in them days.
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That AIT is about as good as UM gets, IMO.
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That Phil’s is incredible. One of the GOAT versions.
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It’s a really great version but it’s overfluffed due to track length. There’s basically nothing worthwhile in the rest of the set.
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Hard disagree, i love that jam. That second set definitely fell off after, though. The first set through AIT is one the best stretches of any UM show i have seen out of something like 212. Not sure where im currently at.
The 29 minute track time is definitely deceiving though
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Yeah, the quality and quantity of 4/3 is pretty great. Uncommon and Prowler make for a nice 7 minutes of breather time and the rest of set 1 is pretty much nonstop. Second set is straight gas until the set closing cover. If they played a 30 minute Alex’s → Mulche’s now we’d all flip a shit, and that might only be the third best segment of the show behind Phil’s and a really tasty Roulette JO.
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Curious what people’s thoughts are.
Would you take a set with one truly standout jam with no other improv, or a set filled with multiple forgettable jams?
Edit: I feel like if I saw that second set on Saturday I would be full Greg, just because of the AIT.
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