First things first: heed Bonaroo Bob's advice about paring down set 1 to fit on 1 audio disc. Now on to the critique...!

This show is dominated by breakout fireball climax jams. There are nights when moe is more celestially inclined or are having 'jam/vamp cramps' that result in a more subdued and/or mediocre show, but this night highlights the band when they want to kick serious booty. Of particular note is the bass player's voracious prowess dominating the end jam of the first set and numerous nuanced booty-shake groove diatribes that pepper the entire show. Set 2 houses some serious slap-happy bass-oriented jamming. So the bassist must own a Boomerang(Looping audio device) for layering rings of thumb-thumping bass while interplaying melodic percussive bass riffs above and beyond what most bassist can think of (caveat - the reviewer is a professional bass player). Also of note is the percussionist's vibe solo. I won't make any comparisons to Gary Burton or Lionel Hampton, but it sure is nice to hear a piano-percussive flavor added to the musical prodigiousness on such a fire-jam night as this. And now for the individual notes:

Head jams out nicely as always. Kids, if you skip over the first 4 minutes (a numbingly dumb excuse for a 'song'), develops into a fantasticly rewarding Reba/Fire On The Mountain jam that lasts for a long time and will make your mojo do the Electric Slide. I can see where a fellow reviewer may infer that the jams of set 2 fail to pass the ticker tape of set 1, but INMYHUMBLOPINION, the jams equal the average (or above) of any 2001 moe, although I have to admit that the transition from Meat into the reprise of Head is a bit 'ham-fisted' and that the Head reprise feels rather forced. But this is an insignificant negative point against a genuinely kick-ass show. And, as a coda, they throw in another groan-but-enjoy classic rock foray. This time it's Pink Floyd circa 1973 (Dark Side of the Moon) - the 7/8 blues riffing of Roger Waters' classic rock radio staple 'Money'.

i don't remember where i heard this but it is believed that al feels that this is the best first set the band has ever played. rebubula > spaz medicine, akimbo, captain america > recreational chemistry. that set is every bit as hot as it looks and i'd have to agree with al. best first set ever.

personally, i feel like the second set kind of dragged on a bit, with meat not really doing anything unconventional. the head > kids was good but the heavy hitters following didn't live up to their usual reputation.

The sound is solid here, not exceptional but certainly good. The show has that Fall, 2001 feel, jammy and fresh. As for the layout, I didn' want to have 4 cd's where two of them were only 30 minutes or so. For set one, you can put it all on one cd if you skip the disk 1 track 1 intro, and then edit Rec. Chem to take out the last 10 seconds of applause as it fades out. If you don't take out the last bit, the tracks come to 5 seconds over 80 minutes. For newbies out there like myself, I edited the track in Easy CD Creator after saving the original under a new name then cutting off the end of the track. Maybe you already knew how to do this, but I didn't. Now I do. Anyway, a 4-star sound and performance rating. For a five-star 2001 show, get 10/7/01 with Willy Waldman, and check out the Halloween and 11/30/01 shows: these latter two have the only (to date) covers of Strawberry Fields Forever and While My Guitar Gently Weeps. After listening to theme, you'll wonder why Moe. never did them again...