Charts & Fun Facts: Joe Russo's Almost Dead

One of these days, we'll put together our own statistical breakdown and visual analysis of the music of Joe Russo's Almost Dead, but for now there's some excellent work being published from an unlikely place.  David Kay, a JRAD fan from Manchester UK, has packaged up some tidbits about the band's first 50 shows into a tidy PDF.

Kay first conceived of the idea during the 2014 Denver Ogden Theater run.  "Encouraged by others who had also travelled halfway across the world for the first Colorado run, I naively decided to make a spreadsheet to create some kind of ongoing record from all this stuff -- and we called it JRADbase."

Granted, this summary only covers the first 50 shows -- ending just before Halloween '15 (the band just completed their 63rd show) -- and do not include the incredible late fall, New Year's and Jam Cruise shows, where the band continues to break new ground (mini-acoustic set, horns section, Radiohead and Springsteen covers).

But it's clear that love and hard work went in to this output rises to the level of the band's incredible accomplishments.  Among the things I learned:

• the relative rarity of GD staples like "Lovelight" and "Wharf Rat" in the JRAD repertoire
• I attended the two set show with the least amount of songs (13, Concord Music Hall 4/24/15)
• the band debuted 15 (!) songs at a show in early 2015 (1/23, Brooklyn Bowl)
• only 5.5% of songs were repeated at the next consecutive show
• the band has yet to cover a Brent tune.

Check out the full PDF for more interesting facts and the JRADbase spreadsheet for some raw data.  Here's a couple of samples of the charts and visuals contained within.