Are The Decemberists and Pearl Jam.

I can't get enough of The Decemberists. Very engaging live.

The band changes up their set list and throws in some offbeat covers. And of course, there's "The Mariner's Revenge Song"

the ultimat audience participation song.

I saw them twice the last time in San Francisco.

I saw Pearl Jam most recently at the Gorge in Eastern Washington in 2005 and at the LA Forum during their last tour.

Both shows had 3+ hour sets.

I don't really go to too many shows anymore, the three reasons are, people talking, especially during quieter songs. Lame opening bands, and pot smoke, which I have a bad reaction to.

Aren't most venues supposed to be smoke-free?

Looks like fun, for the offense. But, holy crap, you've better have a couple of Vince Young-type QB's to run this thing, or you ain't moving the ball.

I'll rant, but first I'll tell this story to give a little perspective.

In the 90's I worked the in the production department at KTVA, the CBS affilliate in Anchorage, Alaska. CBS had the 1992 and 1994 winter games. As you can imagine, cross country skiing is huge in Alaska, and there were some local athletes participating in those events. Except CBS never really showed any XC skiing execept in a nice two minute package of highlights. Our viewers called up and beseiged us, wanting more skiing and less of that dammed figure skating.

The problem is, and as one letter writer implied, it may have started in 1984, is that producers are looking for "storylines" and covering an event from start to finish is secondary. That's why so much of NBC's coverage was chopped up (in addition to the time difference.)

I watched most of the Olympics on NBC's online site. I have really no interest in watching wall to wall gymanstics. Nor did I hardly watch any beach volleyball or diving. And I agree that the track and field coverage was lacking.

What I did watch online was most of the other sports NBC would only show in highlight packages. The difference in live and uncut than canned is telling. I got caught up in the equestrian cross country event, watching it live, then shocked how badly trunicated the event had been reduced down to a 20 minute highlight package the next day.

The sport I watched the most was handball, since it pretty much got no coverage on NBC, and it looks like a hell of a lot fun to play. I even rooted for the streaky, slightly over-their-heads Hungarian women's team over the perfect Norwegian women, who won the gold.

It would be great if somebody like ESPN could give us live 24/7 coverage of the Olympics. NBC did experiment with a separate soccer and basketball channels, but only if you had HDTV service. Perhaps, by the winter games of 2010 they'll wise up and put all of the events on demand.