Re: Progress updates - Stay on topic!
Ok, obviously not the popular theory around here, but let me explain my reasoning:
1) They could be giving us a lot more information right now than they have, but they haven't. Why are they suddenly going to drop half of the new album on us when we don't even have the title of the album yet or as much as a 20 second tease?
2) The only precedent for them going out on tour and playing half of the new material without a release is summer of 2000. And we all know (them included) how that ended up.
3) I know people are going to say "well there is precedent for them playing their new material live first." Spring 2009, they only really played three songs regularly, one of which they had already made available to everybody and had been released as a single (I know they played Beachball and Seven a few times as well). I would also make the argument that that tour was the exception to the norm, because of the unusual circumstances that the album was supposed to be released in April and then got pushed back. That was supposed to be a promotion tour and people bought tickets for it as such. I think they felt obligated to play some new stuff even if it wasn't released yet. Think about all of the other times the band was sitting on new material during a tour (Fall 2000, Spring 2002, and Spring 2005), they played at most 2 new songs (I realize in Spring of 2002, all they had was 2 new songs, so not a great example. But who knows what they would have done if they had more songs).
4) Dave has played several benefits since the album was recorded. And he has only played Mercy, and he didn't even play that until he was on national television with the POTUS. He pretty much had to play a new song there.
5) When Fonz was tweeting about practicing, he said that he practiced all of the material, and he said that the first up was BW, because he starts with the most recent stuff first. If they were going to play new songs, wouldn't Album X be what he started with?
6) The logic supporting the argument that they are going to play 5 new songs sounds a lot to me like the logic that the album must be coming out in the summer. People thought that the album was done and it only makes sense to release it asap. That obviously wasn't true. Now people are saying that they have new material that they are excited about, it only makes sense that they play a lot of it this summer. Well the album isn't coming out until the Fall, and we will see about the new material this weekend.
This all being said, I am not down about this. If they play new stuff, awesome. If they don't, more room in sets for other, hopefully older material. I just don't think everybody should agree that we are getting 4-6 new songs, and then when it doesn't happen, wonder how this could happen.
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