Re: How would you rate the 2018 DMB tour so far?
OK, I thought of another way to think about this question—I think there are a number of valid ways, some of which the negative answers in this thread opened my eyes to... I ranked (approximately) all the tours and then I took 2018 and started with the bottom of the list (either 2009 or 2005 for me) and said, if I could only listen to one random show from this tour or that tour, which would I pick? 2018 easily beat out 10 tours (09, 05, 07, 15, 13, 12, 16, 01); I didn't have to think too hard for a couple more (14, 06, 10)—this would put it almost exactly in the middle—and then I guess I could see a lot of people getting mad about this, but personally I like more people on the stage and a more developed sound, so I have 2018 very narrowly beating 93 and 94 and maybe 97. Very painful exercise but I'd just rather hear keys and electric and trumpet in the mix, as much as I miss Roi and Boyd when he was good. So that's how I got to my 'above average' answer.
That being said, immediately after that in my list I get to a number of tours that 2018 doesn't come close to touching. But the only two in the post-Butch era are 2011 and 2008, meaning this is the third best tour for me in a decade and the fourth best since 2004. So to me, this tour deserves major props for just being fresh and different than many recent tours which suffered from a bit of stagnation. That being said, I'm not a multiple-show-per-summer guy—I just prefer the live albums at this point to paying a couple hundred to be hot and stand for six hours—so setlist variety doesn't bother me too much. And I'm not too much of a snob; the Stand Up songs are probably my least favorite, but I still genuinely like many of them.
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