first song i recognised - ten-day interval. they didn't play "glass museum", which was the track which originally hooked me on tortoise. the drums were pretty high in the mix, but that was fun - the drummer on the left was interesting to watch - grooving his shoulders around 'n such. dan complained he was a bit too "there" - really consistently on the beat. dan wanted more groove, more laid-back feel action, which the drummer on the right gave when he was running the show. the bass player was fun to watch, and really held the thing together. he switched to guitar for a few tracks, and rationally i knew he was making the noises i could hear, but i couldn't quite work out how his movements were giving rise to those sounds... weird, but entertaining.

the crowd went a bit spaz when ten day interval kicked in, but it lacked a real rocking grooving bit (true of the recording too), so it was a bit of an anti-climax. i found myself wanting them to just lay down some seriously assertive "here's the tortoise rock-love" stuff to give everything a bit more dynamic drive rather than wandering between jams and steady recorded track reproductions...

another song i recognised: seneca. this was one of the tracks where the bass player switched to guitar. that guitar-driven intro, with two guitarists playing that lyrical, taking-its-glorious-time, long-phrased rhythm was awesome. the drummers were both blowing their nah-nahs during that section, just like the recording, except the recording has them distorted out a bit - it was better live to hear them just thumping the kit much less effected. the guitar riff on the recording of seneca is great, especially the rapid "dubbadubbadub" at the end of each repetition in the left speaker - that part was played by the bass-player, who'd picked up a guitar. the right-hand drummer (i think) had moved to bass for that track. one little aspect of the guitar riff i love, specifically the rapid slide from a passing note down to the final note of each rep in the right speaker, wasn't really audible live. i missed it for some reason.

i went with dan. i saw andrew from the mime set, caz from laura and because of ghosts, some of the ghosties, seth rees, ben from shade of march and his ben. dan bumped into some guy he knew as well.

the ghosties supported, and apparently did really well - 2 half-hour sets, and people shut up to listen. first support (i.e., after ghosties) didn't have the same impact, from what i heard.