DMBlive Vol. 17

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I don’t particularly care for Dave & Tim in 1993. You may have gotten that sense from my review of DL1, but if not, buckle up. There’s a degree to which Dave is unserious throughout this show. I’m not looking for him to have a stiff upper lip, and I enjoy his crazy stories as much as the next person, but this show is dominated by meandering cross-talk with Tim. The guitars frequently sound out of tune and/or they’re hitting bad notes. It does sound like they made the set up at least partly on the fly, and there was a fair bit of hesitation about quite a few of the selections. Maybe I was in the wrong headspace when I listened, but none of the performances stand out to me. If you’re choosing between this and DL1, you should choose DL1. But if you’re looking for an early Dave & Tim show and you don’t care about it being 1993 specifically, LT48 (from 1994) runs circles around this show. I try to avoid rating shows a 0 because these are songs we know and love, and at the end of the day I’d take this show over most other artists, but I have to stay true to my system: “maybe a song or two worth revisiting” is about right.