Since I love I&D, it can't be "I&D heavy" to me. I thought the energy of the first two songs was incredible. Bird On A Wire, my favorite song from I&D, was everything I could have hoped for. Mike was ON. FIRE. En fuego.
I was pleasantly surprised with the encore. I haven't really connected with The Similitude/Great Adventure records like many others have, so when Bill (Axeman) and I were talking about what the set could look like, I was really hoping for Alive Again instead of the medley. But I left convinced. It was a powerful segment and they did it right.
For me, and I get that it's just for me, that was an almost perfect show. The musicianship was off the charts; I've already said Mike was on fire, and I really don't know how Neal does it, frankly. He constantly rotated between four instruments (counting the laptop) and sang - though Eric took at least one if not two of the parts that I always attributed to Neal. While there were errors, it was organic and never detracted from the show. If anything it made it more real; Neal came out as Do It Again started squinted at his laptop and reached into his pocket to pull out his reading glasses. How metal is that? His roadie plugged in his acoustic and there was a huge click, and later he walked to the front of the stage and the cord pulled out on him. Yet he never missed a beat. The song selection wasn't perfect (I would have liked Alive Again, and Not Afraid Pt. 1) but it was solid. I feel blessed (pun intended) to have witnessed Waterfall live. It was simply amazing.
I'm excited to see them again tonight to see what changes, if anything, and to see what might have been modifications from the record to the stage, or what might have been "improv" (mistake?). There was a segment where Randy had a sort of solo spot along with Mike and it seemed like Mike MIGHT have missed the beat and Randy looked at him; was it to keep time in a complicated spot, was it acknowledging that Mike was playing with him a bit, or was it acknowledging there was a mistake there.