Panic in the Streets was an official live album by
Widespread Panic documenting the launch concert for
Light Fuse, Get Away. Held in Athens, GA, in 1998, it shows the band at the first real peak of its live improvisational powers.
Panic in the Streets concentrates on the band's increasingly precise songcraft as a way into improvisation. John Bell was really coming into his own as a frontman here, and the complete exploration of harmonic and rhythmic structures in the heart of the rockist "Tall Boy,"
Vic Chesnutt's greasy funk ditty "Aunt Avis," and the dynamically diverse "Pilgrim" makes one wonder why anyone ever got excited about
the Grateful Dead -- and no, that's not hyperbole. ~ Thom Jurek