I'd rather see them play the Circle in its entirety live, a twelve-song set and no other songs, than endure anymore of these set lists. Two reasons why:

1. I like the Circle as much as the day I first listened to it. It hasn't grown old for me at all; in fact it's only grown on me. And certain songs that I wasn't too hot about at first I've come to really love, such as WWWB and Working Man. Furthermore, outside of maybe Bullet all the songs so far have worked well live; yeah Brokenpromiseland was slow and sloppy; the problems were in the execution rather than the song's live potential. It still had a punch and had they played it more than ONCE it likely would have improved. So in short, the album would be exciting to hear live.

2. These set lists are becoming a cruel joke. This has become, in my professional estimation, the most predictable stretch of shows in a longass time. The fact large chunks of it are leftovers from the LH era do not help either: that middle section with WGIGO (we'll get to LH in a second), BM, IML, followed by a Richie song and some ballads, is completely lifeless, because we've lived through it a million times. The encores are insulting to the fanbase; they don't have to pull a Montreal Night Two every show, but how hard is it to do something more thoughtful than RUNAWAYDEADORAPRAYER?

What's worse, there's very little inspiration in any of the mainstays. There are exceptions: the power ballads sound as good as they have in a decade and a half. Blood on Blood has been a neat opener. And Bad Name still is exciting to hear early on. But do you guys really get excited when they do a half-assed version of Keep the Faith or Saturday Night (again, Montreal being the exception), or factory versions of Wanted and Prayer, or the Valium that is It's My Life live? Or how about hearing the ten-minute versions of Bad Medicine and Who Says again and again? Granted, all these songs would become instantly engrossing again if the band shook them up: moved them around the set, did medlies and extended versions, played them juxtaposed with new songs, etc. Instead we just get the ultimate autopilot.

And yeah, the high-presence of Lost Highway songs needs little digression. The fact SUMMERTIME was conjured out of the cesspool says enough. What is Jon's logic in playing more songs from Lost Highway than from the new album? Well, I'm sure his justification was that Lost Highway was seemingly a bit hit in the states- I stress the word seemingly. So, because he fears losing his mindless middle-America crowd that makes up a huge percentage of the audience every night, he throws in a lot of crap that a lot of fans and people with high intelligence despise. Then, in a weak effort to appease the latter group, he throws in Something for the Pain as a mainstay (which, in essence, I'm happy with) and occasionally another gem. That's it. After all, they're less vital than the middle-America portion. And Jon apparently lacks the spine- or conviction- to just play a set that shows the band's full potential and not give a shit about the commercial crowd reaction.

***

So that's why I'd rather see them just play the Circle, nothing more. I'd be much happy with a 50 minute set than two hours of the same thing we've all seen for three years running. Granted, if the band were playing the sets they started with this tour- with oldies and random gems, that they for no apparent reason got rid of, other than Jon probably thinks saving them for the only surprises at Giants stadium will be a good idea- and if they put the passion and thought into the mainstay songs here that they did over in Europe, I'd probably retract my statement. That said, what do you think?