I very much anticipated listening to both Melbourne shows (this one right here and the one from the previous night) since such successive shows nicely complement each other and make for a great little collection if it works out and everything falls into place (see for instance, the consecutive shows @ the LA Palladium in 1992).
However, listening to these Melbourne shows, I have to admit that the first one doesn't really work for me, mainly because of some issues regarding the sound quality. The first couple of songs from that show suffer from some serious sonic anomalities that only subside during Target, and even afterwards the mix is not quite well balanced.
Luckily, this second show featured right here does not suffer from those issues and makes for tremendous listening. The set list - which happens to include several of my favorites - really flows on this particular night with a couple of song combos that work really well, cf. Give Me The Cure into Bad Mouth (the guitarplay during these is absolutely soaring!) or Shut the Door into Turnover and Closed Captioned Instrumental into Version. At the same time, the renditions of these songs sound simply spectacular to me on this occasion. And there are other musical highlights as well, such as Bed For The Scraping or Instrument (one of my favorites, if only for the sonic outburst, this is vintage Fugazi at its best).
Also, I think it is interesting to note that two songs that are taken from the - at that point - yet to be released album End Hits (1998) are introduced with a different song title, i.e. Place Position is introduced by Guy as April March (dedicated to Australian politician Pauline Hanson), and Five Corporations is introduced by Ian as Brand X.
So there it is, a wonderful show with an impeccable sound quality to back it up. The only drawback being that the beginning of both Exit Only and Waiting room is cut short for some reason. But do not let that prevent you from grabbing this one!