Baller's Corner

Lying in the park on a beautiful day
Sun shining in the grass and the children play
Sirens pass and fire engine red
Someone's house is burning down on a day like this

SUMMER IS BASICALLY HERE!!!!

...and you know what that means? That's right, it means from now until October nearly all conversations will revolve around DMB. The air will be filled with commentary, speculation, pre and post-show plans and plenty of opinions regarding our favorite band. It also means that anytime the temperature is especially warm, or a bowling alley accidentally starts playing the studio version of Stay... we are transported to another place and time, in a manner much like Pavlov's dog would salivate at the mere ringing of a dinner bell. This "DMB effect" as I'll refer to it henceforth, is perhaps double or triple strength this year with a new album on the horizon and a spring tour well underway.

And with that, here's a video that will certainly give you the DMB effect

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRMp2HwMM7o

IS THAT NATE?!?!?!

And now that we've all got the effect, I will now fill the air with my predictions, commentary and speculation for this year's spring and summer tour. The spring tour has been very interesting thus far. I guess the first item of importance that perhaps shaped this spring tour was the album release date getting pushed back from April 14 to June 2. As everyone expected this tour has seen the debut of some new songs, but probably not as many new songs as if the album was released on the same day as the tour started. I assume that if this was the case, this tour would more closely resemble the Roseland ballroom show from 2005 where nearly half of the songs played were from the new album at the time, Stand Up. In contrast, on this tour so far we've gotten three new songs and a few notable returns from the archives, namely Raven, Pig, Recently, and a week of partial Blue Waters. The set lists have not been incredibly varied so far, this is telegraphed by the fact that the same few songs are opening each show, and Watchtower closing just about every other night. I assume this is probably due to the band trying to familiarize themselves with the new songs. They probably spent a lot of time rehearsing the new songs and not a lot of older songs. However, this seems to be improving as the tour progresses, most notably in the fact that Seek up came out a few nights ago, and that Two Step opened yesterday. Yesterday also marked the end of the consecutive Blue Water partial song/teases, whatever that means.

Speaking of Blue Water. What is going on?!?!?! Dave tweeted two simple words “Blue Water” and this is followed by one tease and three partial versions of the song over the course of a week. Stefan also tweeted about this, saying that he told us all that Blue Water would return. Is it here to stay? Will it get longer? Will Dave ever return to the lyrics after the Boyd solo so that it can be officilly “liberated”? One of the following scenarios will occur:

• Now that it was not played last night, the course of this song will resemble last year's Halloween dog and pony show, where it was played several nights in a row, and then disappeared completely.

• It will remain as a tease/partial song and open a few encores for the rest of the year.

• It will continue to evolve, and end up a fantastic 20 minute jam that remains for the rest of the summer.

I'm sure I speak for all of us when I vote for option three. There are a lot of questions this tour. All of these questions amount to a damn good reason to watch these set lists very very carefully, and I look forward to doing just that with all of you this year.

Now for this weeks trivia question!!!!

Livetrax 15 is the 8.9.08 show from Alpine valley, and this will be packed in free with all pre-orders of Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King. The opening song for this show was Dancing Nancies which is a bit of a rarity! So rare that it has only happened 3 times since 1995. Your trivia question is to name the two others. I'll have the answer next week!!! good luck!