Inn of the Mountain Gods Resort & Casino - Mescalero, New Mexico - 9.6.10

The Black Crowes

Inn of the Mountain Gods Resort & Casino

Mescalero, New Mexico

September 6, 2010

Movin' On Down The Line

Horsehead

Black Moon Creeping

Make Glad

Ballad In Urgency

Wiser Time          

By Your Side 

The Dolphins

Share The Ride

She Talks To Angels

Jealous Again

Remedy

- encore -

Nonfiction

Thick n' Thin

Located on the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation, the land that this show was played on is not where you would want to step out of a time machine any time between the 1500s and late 1800s and go for a leisurely afternoon walk.  Once the Spanish arrived in the mid-1500s things turned sour, and when white settlers started showing up about 250 years later, all hell broke loose.  Throw in the Mexicans and other Indian tribes defending their land and trying to survive and you start to get an idea why it was called the Wild Wild West.  

Tonight's show began with 2008's most popular opener, Movin' On Down The Line, or Moving On Down The Line, or Move It On Down The Line, whichever you prefer.  While tough to track on Crowesbase as it pops up in setlists under all three titles, this was the first time it opened a show on the tour so far, unless you count the Firekeeper's Casino gig on July 24th, which technically came before the official start of the tour.  And speaking of 2008, was this really the first Horsehead in two years?  We think so. 

By this time, thanks to a little encouragement from Chris for everyone to get up and move around a little, people were finally starting to show signs of a pulse.  Black Moon Creeping and Make Glad helped to get a few more people out of their seats but it wasn't the full on rock show atmosphere it could have been.

Maybe the people who were still sitting down weren't into the show because they were thinking about Holloman Air Force Base, which is about 40 miles south of Mescalero and happens to be the sight where some of the Transformers movies were filmed.  It's also where a reported meeting between President Eisenhower and extraterrestrials took place in 1955.  Some say the meeting actually went down at Edwards AFB in 1954, and some attest that both stories are true.  Whatever the case, one of these meetings was supposedly the inspiration for the final scenes in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  There's more to read on the subject here and here if you want to go deeper down the rabbit hole, and if you want to hear Ike warn the nation about dangers of our own doing, here's a clip from his prophetic farewell speech from 1961.

Back to the show...Ballad In Urgency came after Make Glad and crept into Wiser Time as it was meant to do, everyone took a turn and over twenty minutes later the spaceship finally landed back on Earth.  By Your Side, which some people wish was still known as If It Ever Stops Raining, was a mild surprise popping up in the middle of the set.  Then the always crowd-confusing Dolphins washed in and as usual left a few folks scratching their heads.  We're not sure it's best served being played at a casino show but this was the second time so far this tour that it's been played in the vicinity of slot machines.  Winding down, the trio of She Talks To Angels, Jealous Again and Remedy closed out the set and finally gave the gamblers who listen to FM radio a few tunes they were able to sing along to for the first time all night.

A rare encore appearance for Nonfiction complete with long jam sent more than a few toward the exits and Thick n' Thin capped off the night so all the New Mexico high rollers could head back to the craps table.  And with that, we're getting the hell out of here pronto before we accidentally stumble onto an ancient Apache burial ground.  Next stop:  the famous Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa...