The Mardi Gras Phil and Friends show with Umphrey’s McGee on February 12th was an incredibly good time. My wife and I flew down to San Francisco for the show, and it was well worth the time and money involved. Not that the actual music was mind-blowing, but the entire adventure was serious fun. Had the very same music been played at a non-Mardi Gras show, I would have been slightly disappointed. The music was great at times, but it was also shaky, slow, tentative, and sloppy at other times. Also, there was not much in the way of deep space improvisations as the jams were straight ahead and upbeat for the most part and the song selection did not include much from the catalogue of the Dead’s spacier explorations. But I wasn’t necessarily looking for those qualities in a Mardi Gras show.
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