Woohoo! Welcome aboard Hipster! Er, I mean, "Hal!" ;-)

And yes, I was there too (obviously, I was there with Hal), and indeed it was a snoozer of a show. I literally was falling asleep.

Of course, for a warm, breezy Saturday night with some good friends and some red wine... it wasn't *all* that bad. ;-)

It's so disappointing when a show doesn't live up to expectations. My wife and I just saw CSNY and while they played a good length of time, I was mostly frustrated with the set. Neil Young was obviously interested in getting out his anti-war, anti-Bush message and played almost all of his new cd, which is good but also means that you heard almost nothing else from his whole catalog. C S and N each took turns singing solo and sometimes much more obscure songs. Long story short - some interesting moments but I would not go again (and I'm a big CSNY fan).

Heard Counting Crows are changing up or excluding some of their most popular songs on this tour. They might be tired of playing Mr. Jones, but that's why most people go. I guess you have to do research and find out what the band is going to do!

I saw Kelly Willis once at the Continental Club in Houston, a very cool place but one with a notoriously bad and/or drunk sound guy. She was quite unhappy with the mix and kept making her feelings known not only to the sound guy but to the audience as well. She played for about an hour and 15 minutes as the headliner and split. I understand having a bad night at the office, but your paying fans deserve more -- there are a lot tougher things in life than stomaching a bad sound guy, and despite the fact the fans got ripped off, the sound guy got paid anyway. Something to keep in mind for you performers out there. OTOH, Wayne Hancock gave us something else to keep in mind on another date at the same bar. His opening act had a flat or some sort of vehicular breakdown and couldn't show, so Wayne just went out there by his lonesome and did an hour solo show before being joined by his band for a three-hour set. Yeah, dude played 9:30 to 1:30, straight through. That guy was setting an example, whether he intended to or not. He got my everlasting respect on that evening.

Your post begs the question, though, do you need more than an hour of Patty Griffin?

I saw her in the Sweet Harmony Traveling Revue show. How she fit that bill is still a mystery to me, but she was a well-scheduled bathroom break between Gillian Welch and the ensemble finale. Her music didn't register enough for me to really know, but I got the feeling that all her songs were about fading photographs of little girls in Easter dresses pining for old New England farmhouses. The slope of diminishing returns there is pretty steep.

Boney, that's hilarious!

Yeah, I've never been much of a Griffin fan, but I'd never really listened to her. I always figured I would eventualy. I've heard from Hal and others that she normally puts on a more rockin' show, so here's hopin'.

Much to my heartbreak, I left a Neko Case show once two songs in because she was super late coming on stage, then spent about 30 minutes fiddling with the sound. Not just fiddling, actually, but starting a song and stopping to fiddle more. Leaving stage with no explanation (presumably more fiddling), saying TEST TEST into the mic 900 times in a row, etc. Granted, I'm no purist, but it all really truly sounded fine to me. And to everyone else. We were all shouting "You sound great!" but apparently she didn't believe us. So when she finally got through song 1 (sounding awesome) but then recommenced the sound futzing after song 2, that was it for me. I guess technically she was trying to give her fans her best, but I know I left feeling screwed instead.