Episode 229: Champaign, IL – 4/23/2003

Continuing on our run of Riot Act shows, this week takes us to the home of the Fighting Illini in Champaign, IL. For this show being on a college campus and therefore not allowing the sale of alcohol, the crowd did an excellent job bringing in the same kind of energy that you’d see from their in-state big city counterpart in Chicago.

There are a handful of interesting things from this one. Do The Evolution is opened with for only the 4th time to this point, The Police cover, Driven To Tears, is played for the first time in 404 shows, and the first with a full band, and Ed will break out a ukulele for The Who song Blue Red Grey that Ed admits he stole for Soon Forget. Those two covers are part of this show’s major theme which is a total of six covers played on this night. We’ll discuss this in full detail and bring to the table how many covers are enough or too much to play in a set.

You guys weighed in on that on social media and answered that exact question, so we’ll read some of the answers that we got in the episode. Randy will talk a little bit about his upcoming Seattle trip for the last week of the MoPop exhibit and Record Store Day at Easy Street, and Javier’s Gear Guru segment will focus on the juxtaposition of tones from Given To Fly and Nothingman played back to back on this night.