this alone does not mean it's better. sure, you might do it for adrenaline, but, IMO, FTR doesn't sound good played so rapidly. i like it better as the trudging, slug-it-out, hard-rocking guitar-fest that it is. i think it's a wontabulous way to start off their album (it just may be my favorite song on there).
however, you do make good points with your other remarks. i think the reason why i went for Stapp was that, with him, I really wasn't expecting a whole lot, to be quite honest. the live performances of him I'd seen (World Series... in person!, NASCAR awards, and... one other, I think) in the past year or so hardly impressed me, so Leno was definitely a step up for him. AB, meanwhile, if I'm not mistaken, performed on Leno after I'd seen live concert footage of them (neither rivaled what I saw in person the week after Leno), so, in that regard, it was a bit of a let-down for me. i suppose that, in all, AB's performance was superior, but the fact that i had set my expectations so high for them on that particular performance did take away from it a bit (also, as I recall, the TV i watched it on didn't have good sound quality, so that sucked... i realized this when i watched a clip on the internet someone had uploaded and it sounded much better)
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