The Winter/Spring ’91 tour was a marathon tour that started in the beginning of February and went through mid-May.  63 shows in all.  I was lucky enough to catch a bunch of them, the silver-lining in temporarily flunking out of college.  By the time the band made it back to the east coast at the end of April they were a well-oiled machine.  The gig at SUNY Potsdam was part of the school’s Earth Day Festival and the “Suggested Donation” to get into the show was $5.  They also had free veggie dogs which was rad because I had just become vegetarian a month earlier when out at the Colorado shows (involving a bloody Whopper, but I’ll save that story for my 3/13/91 posting).  We showed up early and helped the band unload their truck and then ate a bunch of fake hot dogs and hacky sacked.  The Barrington Student Union  was a pretty non-descript hall, big and square, almost like a gymnasium.  It was actually pretty big and after all the frat boys and curious onlookers left after the first set the whole back half of the place was open.  During Bowie we were running across the back of the floor as fast as we could and were seeing how far we could slide in our socks.  Unfortunately, the show did not start off so well for me.  We had stashed our stuff under the riser for the soundboard/lightboard and were waiting for the show to start.  In all of my infinite wisdom, I decided to blaze one in the middle of the room, with all the lights on and only about 200 people in the show.  I was sharing the bowl with an unnamed crew member who may or may not have been running the lights and was just about to pass it back when I felt a tap on my shoulder-

Busted.....

Busted!  Ugh…They asked me for ID, but it was in my wallet under the soundboard riser.   They sent an officer back to the venue and actually got my buddy DJ Bagel Boy (aka The Duck) to climb under the riser and get it for them.  The other officer brought back my wallet and ID and they asked me why I was in Potsdam (“To see a band..”), where I was staying (“Not sure yet…”) and how much money I had with me (to make sure I wasn’t a vagrant).  Then they let me go on $20 bail with a notice to appear in court.  I made it back to the show during the blat-boom part of Wilson which I though was pretty good considering. There is a whole other story about going back for the court date, but that’ll be in my 5/2/91 post someday. Anyway, back to show.  This show is hot from start to finish:

Set 1: Golgi Apparatus, Rocky Top > Wilson >The Divided Sky, Foam, My Sweet One, The Oh Kee Pa Ceremony > AC/DC Bag > Tela, Mike’s Song > I Am Hydrogen > Weekapaug Groove, Sweet Adeline

Set 2: Possum, Fee, The Landlady, Colonel Forbin’s Ascent > Fly Famous Mockingbird > Llama, Uncle Pen, Harry Hood, Cavern

Encore: I Didn’t Know, David Bowie

Pretty much every song has something to offer and first set gets hotter and hotter, peaking with a great Weekapaug before closing the set with a pretty Adeline.  The second set has some great stuff and everyone was stoked to get a very rare (for the time) Gamehendge narration between Forbin’s and Mockingbird in honor of Earth Day.  It was after this show that the Forbins->Mockingbird narration became fairly standard practice when the combo was played.

I couldn’t decide whether to pick the set 2 ending Harry Hood->Cavern or the I Didn’t Know->David Bowie encore for this post, so I am picking all four tracks.  The Harry Hood is one for the ages and one of my top five versions.  Cavern is not a song I usually care too much for, but if they played it like this every night, I probably would:

We were all highly stoked on the show to this point, and the I Didn’t Know->Bowie was just icing on the cake.  I Didn’t Know features an always welcome trombone solo from Fish and the Bowie cranks:

MP3 of the show can be found here: http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=e64969679d601a07ab1eab3e9fa335cacbcbfb25037fe580

Lossless version is here: http://bt.etree.org/details.php?id=544253