Dave Matthews Band - Cruzan Amphitheatre, West Palm Beach - July 20

Sayre Berman

See also:
A concert hookup guide to the bros of Dave Matthews Band
That Dave Matthews joke isn't funny anymore
Photos of Dave Matthews Band at Cruzan Amphitheatre

Dave Matthews Band
Cruzan Amphitheatre, West Palm Beach
Friday, July 20

Better than: Eating a $10 hot dog and chugging $5 water while watching talentless musicians perform mostly prerecorded pop music.

Dave Matthews Band isn't just a group that made the soundtrack for popping cherries in the late '90s. Actually, it's a band of sorcerers who've harnessed the powers of the Grateful Dead to cast a love spell on thousands and thousands of bad dancers, resulting in a massive DMB cult following of poorly dressed music lovers. These improv wizards packed a very sweaty Cruzan Amphitheatre with both casual and overly dedicated fans last night for the first of two West Palm Beach shows.

About a quarter of the way through the set, DMB performed "Typical Situation," a recognizable song for someone who went to college about ten to 20 years ago. For the casual fan, it perhaps brought a nostalgic tear to the eye or revived a dorm-room make-out-sesh memory. But for the devoted, this was a huge deal. Apparently, it's really rare to hear "Typical Situation" performed live. You know why we know this? Because we scored the best Dave date ever.

Let's call our mildly ashamed friend Handrew. This was the 23rd Dave Matthews Band concert that he's attended. Yes, 23. He's not even 30. You likely haven't gotten your teeth cleaned that many times in your life. Be honest and go see your dentist. That's real commitment.

Sayre Berman

Point being, we received an education. Handrew first saw DMB at the same venue when it was called Coral Sky ('member that?) on May 2, 1999. He knows this date and the dates of all the other times he's seen the band perform, what songs were played at each show, the percentage of songs performed off each of their albums at the show last night, and that this concert had a song rarity ranking of 15 out of 33 (whatever that means).

As a member of antsmarching.org, a fan site popular years back, you can keep track of this kind of genuinely nerdly stuff. It's like your own personal online DMB baseball card. Apparently, he and 305 other Ants Marching members were at the show too. Wait a minute; were they fucking with us about the 305? We always knew God was a fan of Miami jokes.

So, was the show last night a 10 or a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10? Well, it was not a 10, and it wasn't a 5. Just as each song meandered in jam fashion, so did the tempo of the evening. The concert was not seamless, and there were somewhat long pauses between almost every song. It seemed apparent that Dave was simply hot as shit. Like physically overheated (you perverts) and overwhelmed by the humidity. He kept saying things like, "Keep warm, it's a little bit chilly." But sarcastically, because it was balls hot out there. It was possibly a choppy show because these guys were taking breaks to wring the sweat out of their shirts. Dave definitely did a costume change.