Got to Bolton around 3 pm, parked in the main lot, tailgated. Cops and liquor control seemed to be very strong all day. We had already decided that up front in this crowd wasn't where we needed to be, after being soooo close on Friday that Gord's sweat was reaching people right in front of us. Our plan was half way up the mountain where the sound would be great, and the view alright. Too bad the mud was waist deep!
We went way up in back, and although it was certainly the furthest I"ve ever been from the band, the sound was incredible. Also pretty incredible was watching the 4000 or so folks way down in front all moving together as one. Looked to be a pretty good crowd from where we stood. Cold...... especially after wallowing in the mud to find a dry spot.  I have to admit that we listened to the first encore in the parking lot, and bailed before the traffic got bad.
So after Fire in the Hole, I missed it.  But since I was running on two hours of sleep, I really thought it best to just get out early. Besides there were way too many drunks all needing to take the one road out. Did take some pics on Friday, have to pick them up today. hopefully something good.
Resting til october
Lorelei
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Hello my peeps,
Hope all is well.. just woke up after driving back to Montreal from the show last night.. (went to sleep at 5:00am, so if things don't make sense, have mercy)..

Setlist (this will be WAY off, not really in order, but hopefully the jist of it)..

My Music @ Work
Grace, Too (after this the order is probably off)
Giftshop
Tiger the Lion
Opiated (Bobby started playing the mission impossible theme before!)
Nautical Disaster
Ahead by a Century
Putting Down
Courage
Lake Fever
Poets
Fully Completely
The Completists
Fireworks
New Orleans is Sinking
Encore one:
Springtime in Vienna
Train Overnight (I think this is where they played it)
Fire in the Hole
Encore two:
At the Hundredth Meridian

again not really in order, and probably missing a song or two..

on with the day..

Woke up at like 7:00am on Saturday for no reason at all, just couldn't sleep, probably because of the anticipation.. friends came over at 12:45, figuring that we didn't want to be stuck in the position that some people were in Sugarbush (lucky enough I only missed Hayden that time and no hip songs).. we pack the car, and are about to leave when of course the car doesn't start.. lucky enough my friend had brought his car so we used it and no problems.. unfortunately there was no A/C and it was REALLY hot.. on a good day, with minimum traffic the ride should take no longer than about 2hr and 45 minutes.. of course not this time.. we hit the Champlain Bridge in Montreal at around 1:10, and the cars were lined up for miles... by the time we got off the Bridge it was 2:55.. a stretch that would normally take 5 minutes if there was no traffic.. it was crazy.. I'm sure other people coming from the Montreal area were stuck in it as well.. there was some construction on the bridge so of course no one could go smoothly over it, and had to overreact by slowing down to nearly a stop.. anyway seeing that we were three guys, none of us really bothered with getting good directions to the vermont border (I was in Burlington 3 weeks ago and this was my 3rd concert in the area over the last 2 years, but of course of I've got the memory of a rock).. we always got mixed up with the NY border crossing, so we basically left our houses with only the instructions that were given on www.thehip.com, which only told you what exit to get off and what streets to take when you were on I-89 in Vermont.. anyway we stopped off to get a
drink, and asked the guy.. he said it was only 2 exits down and just follow that road.. so we were pretty happy that we hadn't taken any wrong turns or anything.. no problems going over the border either except that the crossing guard was trying to figure out who the Hip were.. anyway, we take exit 11, and hit another road, at which point we needed to look at the instructions
we had.. I checked my www.thehip.com ones... take exit 11, and go south until the access road, and it'll take 8 miles from there.. we check the signs out.. Route 2, East or West.. at this point we're like, well we've still got 2hrs and 15 minutes from the show and we couldn't be that far so it wasn't too much panick, and my friend had got the directions from ticketbastard.. so of course his directions say Route 2, go NORTH until the access road.. so there's three of us in the car with one map saying go
south, one saying go north, and our only options being east or west.. we took west since it seemed to follow the I89 which was going south..  again lucky for us we get to the access road with no problems.. unfortunately we got there just a little too late for the main parking and had to settle for the Hemmingford parking lot or Timberlea parking lot or something similar to that name.. there was plenty of buses and the parking lot crowd seemed pretty tame except for two drunk guys trying to pick up any girls that drove by.. Bolton Alpine Ski area and lodges looked WAY better than Sugarbush.. the venue and the hill just seemed nicer and there weren't any clouds in the sky at all.. it was still really hot and we figured that we'd enjoy it even
more if it got colder so we kept our sandals on and didn't bring any sweaters.. we noticed the after party tent and figured it be a great place to spend a half hour or so after the concert to wait for some of the crowd to disperse.. we get in, and the entire mountain is went with a thin layer of hay over it.. the sun was coming down really hard and we couldn't believe that the ground was wet.. of course being three guys none of us thought of bringing a blanket to lay on so we just got some boxes to sit on.. first place we chose sucked since it was on the right side of the stage where everyone that was late or coming in would stand.. the show hadn't started yet so we moved to the left hand side (to the penisula as Gord called it at one point).. ground was wet and wearing sandals was a huge mistake.. either way the view was great and no one was in the way of our view, and we could
sit and relax during Chris & Kate as well as Guster.. of course everyone stood for the hip but it was a no brainer... right before Chris and Kate got on it started to get a little nippy, but not too bad.. two nice looking girls started huddling together, and we just thought they were really cold, after a while they started kissing and stuff.. (I guess that's more for the guys but either way)..
eventually Chris and Kate got on the stage.. I was a little disappointed with them in Montreal (June 20th).. didn't really impress me much, but they were great last night.. Bobby came on for a bit to play a song which was great.. Gord D. and Bobby were watching the entire show from the side of the stage, and maybe others but I didn't see them...Guster came on and I was expecting great things from everyone's reviews.. of course they ended up being great, though I was disappointed I didn't hear
any of the covers that I found they played through napster.. either way they really got the crowd going and mingled with them nicely.. the singer was pretty funny and and said he's been a fan of the hip's ever since Fully Completely.. they'll be on David Letterman on Tuesday so check it out! maybe they mention they've been touring with the hip, and Dave asks the hip to
play! The Hip came on at about 9:30 or so, and opened with My Music @ Work.. they REALLY seemed into it and the crowd got really into it.. Bobby and Gord S. were moving all around and Gord did his usual stuff.. Grace, Too as usual
was amazing, but the highlight was either Tiger the Lion which just gets better and better live or Opiated.. haven't heard that one in a while so it was great.. as mentioned before Bobby started playing the mission impossible theme before Opiated, and the song itself sounded great.. the lighting and sound from where I was, was absolutely amazing except for maybe Train
Overnight was a little muddy.. Gord was ranting throughout the show, and I could hear Chris Brown's keyboards WAAAAAY more than in Montreal.. for some songs it worked great (Tiger the Lion in the middle was neat, and I like it opening Giftshop since it's a change [I think out of the 12 shows I've seen they've played Giftshop in everyon except for maybe once or twice so I was getting sick of the song somewhat)... I find it didn't work so well during fireworks.. unlike some other reviews in which I heard Kate played some verses by herself, she didn't do it last night.. her voice was fairly hidden for the most part... overall the night was perfect except for the fact that we all froze near the end.. the scenery was awesome for a show, and the stars were all out... it's like being in the wilderness with the best band in the world... someone said there was 4000 people, but I'm fairly sure
there was much more.. the crowd seemed larger than at Sugarbush and Sugarbush had 6-7000... the highlights of the show were definitely Opiated, and Tiger the Lion.. the crowd was very good.. a little moshing here and there, but nothing you
wouldn't expect with that many people there.. it was very tame, but it could have been because there was a warning before the show that the concert would stop if the crowd was too rowdy.. at times the crowd didn't even seem to know a few songs (mostly from the new album), but I was shocked at the reaction of Fire in the Hole.. I think it's an awesome song live and really
intense, but for the most part it looked like the crowd didn't really realize was song it was, and everyone was sort of standing and looking at each other.. and then a few people started getting into it, and it seemed like everyone else just followed because of it... overall the show was great, and there was some interesting things that happened along the way.. didn't see any henhousers though.. but some guy did ask us if we had any weed and who the band playing was (when the hip were on).. he was like, I heard they're from Canada.. it was pretty funny.. not too many flag wavers either.. I only noticed 2 maybe 3 flags, and they weren't raised too too much.. went to the after tent party after the show, and there was NO ONE.. we were the only ones for a while and then maybe 10 people came in here and there... it was FREEZING outside at this point and the tent was only slightly warmer but still better than waiting in line for the buses, so while everyone was waiting for the buses outside we were in the tent.. unfortunately there was no coffee like were told there would be (we needed something to stay warm!),
only ice-chilled drinks so we said forget it.. we were in the tent for an hour and half after the show, until the line was really small.. ended up catching one of the last buses at around 1:30 or so... we ended up stopping in Burlington for a coffee at a dunkin donuts, and a few people came in with hip shirts from the show most likely since they were Music @ work shirts, and it would have been weird if 2 people came in at the sametime with them on.. burlington was about 20 miles from the site... ended up getting to bed at only 5:00am, but it was WELL worth the trip.. the heaters in the car were on for most of the way home.. a nice way to end the summer, but sad to realize that summer's almost done.
be good
Peter
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Vermont: After a fun morning with Slacker, Phil and Mrs. Phil doing some kneeboarding (Slacker was better than me after one run... Bastard!), we drove up to the site like a couple of idiots. There was a bit of a line-up on the hill, but nothing major (it was about 5 when we got there). It paled by comparison to the Champlain Bridge at 1 a.m. (lost an hour there... could they put a sign warning you so you could detour to another one? NooOOOOOooooO!).

At the show, we hooked up with Sean Crowell, Mark Slogget, Dave Kauffman and their entourages in a sweet spot behind that makeshift stream. What was up with that security guard taking puffs from our friend's joint? Everyone in the area was watching him and laughing. Have a feeling someone's job hunting this morning...

Great acoustics and sightline from our vantage point (50-ish feet from the stage). Of the first 8 songs they played, only 2 were from the new album (did they only play 5 new songs last night? that's what I counted). By the 8th song they'd played Opiated, Nautucal, ABAC, Grace, Fully and Giftshop. I guess they were playing family members' requests or something. They didn't play any huge surprises (Opiated counts as one, but I saw it already so it wasn't a big one for me... Though I thoroughly enjoyed it, thankyouverymuch). Heard NOIS for the first time in the 6 shows I attended this summer. Like it a lot when I hear it
that sporadically. It makes it an event, as opposed to a formality.

Bobby was in a great mood. He had a perma-smile. And what was up with his guitars anyway? Every second song he'd broken a string or something and was half off-stage with his techie.

The band was so loose last night, playing around with the songs and cutting in and out when they felt like it. The organ was really in the mix yesterday too, and it added a whole new dimension to a lot of the tunes. Sweetness follows.

I cut out like a maniac after the show. It paid off too, since I was able to cut into the line for a bus going to my parking spot and made it off the hill within about 10 minutes (even with the massive stupidity of the people walking down). So I missed out on some fun after-show activities I'm sure, but at least the plan worked.

Oh well, I'm sure there was more... Writer's block...

Rob
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August 5th Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
A quick thanks to Guster for another good set before The Hip....Good luck to them Tuesday night on the David Letterman show.........

My Music At Work
Grace, Too
Gift Shop
Puttin Down
Ahead By A Century
Fully Completely
Opiated
Nautical Disaster
Tiger The Lion
Poets
Lake Fever
Fireworks
The Completists
Courage
Bobcaygeon
New Orleans Is Sinking (1st One we saw in 5 shows this tour!)
-------------------
Springtime in Vienna
Train Overnight
Fire In The Hole
--------------------
Something On
At The 100th Meridian (The Appropriate Way To Close Out The Tour - Just ROCKING!!!!)