I for one like the old-school "let's review the recordings" style review. This one was mostly fair but I think under-rating 7/2 set III. Then Chris shreds his own credibility by implying that the music was better at Coventry than at 8 or 9.

It used to be a bit of an investment in time and money to acquire shows, spinning tapes, blanks and postage and all that. Having a variety of reviews of the concert (especially if validated by a more objective and, ahem, more sober listen off a tape) was helpful to maximizing the reward of collecting.

However, I think this review and much of Mr. Zerbo's recent output still treats every show, even the live experience, like a *cassette tape* being reviewed by an expert critic. Complaining about an excessive number of 5 minute "turkey sandwiches" in 1:45 long sets makes the most sense from the point of view of start to finish playback, when neither the adrenaline of the live experience nor the thrill of musical improvisation is in play and you have no choice but to listen through until the next nugget, as on cassette. Would SuperBall be a great set of 10 or 12 cassettes, worth the time to spin an equivalent amount of tunes for someone else? I'm not sure... 7/3 yes, others maybe not.

"Will Superball stand up on iTunes?" is a different question. Squash the first 4 sets into 2 sets of highlights and go from there; click through the botched verse in Mango and a couple other weak passages but otherwise the final 3 sets from the stage have a lot to offer, putting it in a 2nd tier of festivals with Lemonwheel and IT IMO. Personally, I had the best times at Clifford, Went, and Big Cypress and those are musically superb as well, but SuperBall is a solid 4th place both as a total live experience and as a set of recordings -- recordings that live in my iTunes, not my cassette vault.