Hahaha. True on the dead part. You nailed it. Although I was thinking about the whole 'style' part of it, and, while it's certainly true of 97, 98, and to some extent 99-04, pre-97 is a lot harder to pin down in terms of style of jamming. I can think of certain melodic phrases that would get returned to (Oye Como Va in YEM comes to mind) but I'm thinking the style might more have been dictated by the song played. YEM would rarely end up dark but Tweezer would almost always touch on that. But tweezer also seemed to be the wildcard where the most out there stuff would go down. I also think (have to say it) that more tightness as a band allows for deft turns and fluid movements that the band is not as quick on these days. So it's harder to go from the song portion to the jam without a built in designated jam portion a la Tweezer. Maybe the lack of bridges lets things go deeper though.

But in 3.0 it is almost never the case that the song dictates the style. Carini more times than not will be blissfull, e.g. While I like the concept of a broader pallette, it seems like eventually they'll land on something organically or be influenced by what they're listening to. Maybe less shows also means that this takes longer to go down. I don't know I'm just kind of tossing stuff out there. On a side note I was thoroughly impressed by Trey's use of effects last night that let his tonal pallette go waaaaay out there beyond what a guitar is supposed to sound like. Man, if you could imagine the effects wizardry of 2.0 combined with the demand for direction (if it's not there then drop it) of 3.0 then they could have something freaking golden this era.