I thought the show was great fun. Worcester is a blah city but it's not the worst to get around in. Of course I know it well. The renovations to the old Centrum look great. Don't see how they could have improved it much more than they did other than tearing it down and building a new facility.

I understand the dumping on Backwards, and I agree that it shouldn't be in the middle of the 2nd set, where it always seems to find itself. It would be an excellent 1st set closer IMO, but a thought on that...

To say it was "soul-crushing" in it's placement is quite an overstatement. Maybe to you but not to me. I love the song and choose to go with the flow when they play it. It's happy and heartfelt and rocks when the band is on.

I honestly think Trey plays it in the 2nd set so much (and I'm being devil's advocate here) to offset some of the minor key, dark jamming and spacey stuff. In the last couple of years he commonly will rip into a major key straightforward rocker right after an introspective section of the show. I think Backwards is one of the songs he uses to that effect, and I think this is why it jars so many people when it happens, because it always seems to be just when they're going deep that they pull it out.

I don't agree with @nichobert that they have gone backwards since last year. I think they've continued to travel down the same road, honestly.

If I had to make a blanket statement about style at this point, I just don't think Trey is comfortable sitting back and grooving and letting the music dictate where he goes, as he so often was in the late nineties. He seems extremely focused on working out specific phrasings and melodic ideas within the framework of their freeform jamming, and his playing (both his chordings and soloing) is very technical. This limits the length of jams because he's not satisfied these days to just ride a groove with his pals for ten minutes. If he doesn't get resolution and focused direction within a minute or two, he ripcords or abandons the vibe for something else. That's been his M.O. for a few years now, it's just that last year (and during parts of '11) it really WORKED.

I think what we started to see last year was Trey becoming more patient and letting his bandmates develop the sound a little more. This year, he's become a little less patient again at times, so perhaps that's what you're hearing.

I don't think the band as a whole has been as tight this year, though. It seems as though there is some level of discord within the band itself as to the direction of the music these days, but they are still clicking about 50% of the time, to my ears, sometimes within the same show.

I think the last few shows bear this out fully. Glens Falls was good but rather hit and miss in spots. Last night was tighter and really the only critique I'm hearing is song selection, and I've never felt that song selection is a valid point of criticism unless there are excessive repeats.