@Th3Gh05t said:

@FACTSAREUSELESS Well, I didn't learn the lesson about partying for a few years after to be honest. I am going by my intuition as well as even the official statement. (Without getting into the fact that Trey was a father too) ....he said he felt a caricature of his past. I can see he wasn't having as much fun as he used to on stage. Many fans hated the new material. I agree I'm making assumptions but I don't feel completely dissassociated about the whole affair. *shrug* thoughts?

Hey, you may be completely right. I thought your analysis had merit, you just worded it as though you had inside knowledge on the situation. That's the reason for my comment...

Piecing together interviews that have been done on the subject, certain elements of what you said have come to the surface in postmortum fashion.

I really enjoyed your story. I was chuckling as I pictured you and your friends lugging that cooler through the woods in Vermont forest (I live in Vermont).

I love a lot of the jamming in the 2.0 era. I love the growling, nasty, dark jams; love Mike's chunky sound, and even love some of the pointless noodling. However, the end of summer '04 is very, very difficult for me to listen to, and not just because of the scene and the circumstance, although that's a big reason.

Relistening to these two shows (I just finished reviewing the first one) just isn't enjoyable from a musical perspective. Trey just misses EVERYTHING. Not just the composed sections; his jamming is sloppy and unfocused. He doesn't hear the cues.....I mean Mike is killing it and Trey just isn't listening, or can't listen. Page doesn't have it either on these recordings. Even the SOAM, which has always been one of my favorite jams, is really too long. Mike and Fish spend good portions of the jam waiting for Trey to catch up and join in.....You can hear Fish constantly reset his timing during portions of the different songs throughout the day in order to accommodate Trey.

The Jibboo that supposedley is so great....I mean Trey sounds like he fell asleep during about 3 minutes of the song after the lyrics end and then wakes up and starts playing again.

Reminds of Jerry during the last tour in '95.