It's been literally 5 years since the show, and no recordings, sadly exist, so I'll do my best to remember as much as I can.

This was my first Gizz show, having gotten into them in my last semester of college that same year. Becoming a Gizz fan in 2017 felt like winning the lottery, there was so much new music coming out and the early great classics. 

The show had an opener, Mile High Club, Chicago natives. At the time I had not heard any Mile High Club beyond the collaboration album that was released just a month prior to the show, and that album was my favorite of the 5 album run at that time. There was no indication just yet if they would ultimately sit in during the main show to play Sketches songs, but luckily they did on Countdown and Rolling Stones.

Lincoln Hall is not an especially large venue, for Phish fans the best comparison may be Higher Ground in Burlington, VT. I was up close for Mile High Club, but once Gizz took the stage it was apparent that a mosh was happening and I am not much of a mosher and worked my way towards the back. The set followed a fairly novel "album section" style format. We opened with the full Han-Tayumi suite from MOTU, with narration from the robot himself, the projection system was beaming the video for the suite on the screen behind them. Once that was done, there was some stage banter as they switched over to the microtonal gear for a block of tracks from Flying Microtonal Banana. Then they switched back to their gear and Amby said "it's time to chill the fuck out" and they went into Lonely Steel Sheet Flyer. At that time, my favorite track off of Quarters was The River, but in this performance Steel Sheet won me over and now it's my favorite track off Quarters. The version played was looser, and felt shorter than the album version, but I don't know if that's just me remembering it in hindsight. 

Once we got a Quarter of Quarters, we got another quarter of MOTU, bringing our MOTU quotient to 2/3rds, with the full Altered Beast suite, sans narration. After that, they kicked into Robot Stop which transitioned smoothly into Hot Water, Stu got on the mic and half spoke half sung something of "building a world", and "I create this universe"... though to be clear, I couldn't quite make out what he was saying. A tease of Masters of the Universe near the transition tied together what I could make out from what Stu was saying to be an acknowledgment of a "Gizzverse", though stopping short of outright saying "Gizzverse". The Nonagon Infinity section of the show continued as Hot Water flowed into Gamma Knife, which in turn flowed into People-Vultures, which was ended. The band brought out Mile High Club for the Sketches of Brunswick East section of the show. This was still the Eric era of the band (and the only show I was able to see of that two-drummer era), so a whole additional band (sans third drummer) on stage was a sight to behold. It was a whole hell of a lot of musicians on one stage. The show ended, the band thanked everyone, and I dashed to Ogilvie Transportation Center to catch the last train back home.


It was a fantastic show, and sectioning the show into blocks per album was quite fun.