Yes

Towerlands Arena, Braintree

12 July 2004

Some negative points (in the interests of fairness) —

• Alan White only used his huge mechanical drum thingy very briefly at the start of one song. What's the point of having a huge mechanical drum thingy covering half the stage if you're only going to use it for 10 seconds? I have a theory that it should have been used more but they dropped dropped some songs from the set.
• I think they went through their back catalogue and said "let's play David Meadows' least-favourite song from each album" (but I didn't mind, they made the songs sound great).
• Rick did look a bit bored sometimes but it didn't affect his playing at all.
• Jon's voice did start to sound a bit tired later in the show, but not really a problem and only noticable if you're being very picky.

Oh, well, none of that at all affected how much I enjoyed the whole thing.

I did notice Rick yawning. But I also noticed him play two keyboards at the same time with his back to them and his eyes closed, and he was shouting jokes to the sound man (?) at his side of the stage (while still playing two keyboards without looking at them). I wonder if he's just so good that playing now is actually boring for him?

I also noticed Jon forgot his lyrics in Mind Drive and the whole band had to stop playing while his teleprompter caught up. (Later on, he gave up the words completely and seemed to do some mystic chanting instead.)

I also noticed Steve creeping across the stage during his solo, trying to find the spotlight.

I didn't notice Alan at all because his drum riser was so ludicrously high, all I could see was two drum sticks sometimes.

I did notice that Chris was so perfect that I can't actually think of anything to say about him.