Phish Band • Page 21

17,000 retweets and 145,000 likes haha.

 

3.6m views! I was laughing so hard at all the comments like "wow that'd be crazy on mushrooms" lol

 

Okay. I've listened back to all 3 nights I was at, 2-4. I'm pretty sure Simple was the jam of the run but fake new years was definitely my favorite show. Piper, all of set 2 night 3, NMINML, Chalkdust, Mike's, Melt honorable mentions. That's a lot of honorable mentions but all deserved imo.

I am going to have to listen back to Vegas now to compare. Have a feeling Vegas still beats it out for me.

Also notable: 8 shows in now, have yet to see a mediocre show. Mohegan N1 2019, Vegas21, N2-4 MSG22. Never Miss A Show I'm At

 

I would probably rank the shows (all of them great, of course):

N2 = N3
N4
<small gap>
N1

Might ramble here, but...

It's always impossible to rank an NYE show fairly, but there was something about this one that just felt extra special. The vibe in the building was simply immaculate and the music followed suit. Great Everything's Right to open things, an extra mustard Back on the Train, a deep and weird Axilla II, and then a pairing of Gin and SANTOS to close where you could tell the crowd was really reaching a fever pitch, ready to explode.

My friend said "that Set Your Soul Free > Light pairing, and really all of the second set felt like a flower slowly blooming" and damn if that's not a perfect description. The pin-drop quiet of What's The Use?* into a Number Line placement that no one can really complain about. A perfect set, really. Not a wasted note.

Then the gag? The fucking gag! The ELATION in that venue. The ooooh and aaaaaah that you felt In the air. THE ACTUAL JAMMING. Look, the gags are always amazing. No place I'd rather be. But the fact is that the music and jamming are often secondary to the spectacle and that was NOT the case here. Awesome, unique jams that perfectly complemented the insane amount of visual stimuli going on: the animal drones, the blue lighting, the raised stage and effects, the confetti canons, the lasers hitting the bubbles to look like fireworks, the kelp dropping, THE WATER LIGHT SHOW FALLING FROM THE STAGE. Are you kidding? You thought it was done and finished but they just kept busting out crazy shit and people kept going more and more insane. Good lord.

Night 2 was a more classic, old school show with a distinctly 1.0 feel and song selection. I've been to 41 Phish shows at MSG and that Ghost was possibly the most wired I have ever heard the venue. Wolfman's through the end of the show is pretty much perfect. Exceptional bliss jamming in the Tweezer. A trifecta of Chalk Dust > Tweezer > 2001 to start your second set is the definition of house money. The rest is just noise.

We've got it simple, cause we've got a band, man.


*My wife and I were in our work box next to a dude named "Monster" for the NYE show. This guy was a big, tall dude from upstate and he had an L strip with Kuroda's lights on them. He also took the fattest finger dip of moll I've ever seen. He also, despite having free alcohol in the suite, gave the attendant $100 to fill a massive souvenir cup with pure whiskey that he drank rather quickly. Despite this, Monster seemed pretty restrained the entire show in terms of sobriety. Then What's The Use? starts and he turns to us and says "I've been waiting for this song my whole life. My whole Phish career." He went to put his hands in a prayer stance in front of him and we all hugged in awe. Only at Phish, truly...

 

My favorite stat of mine is now that I have 2 Axilla IIs lol. Axilla in the garden felt real special, place looks so sick with the lights off. That SANTOS was so funny to me because they were done but Trey had the crowd primed and wanted to get the biggest pop he'll ever get for SANTOS. And yeah that entire set was perfect. Literally perfect. I was staying with some friends who have been going to shows consistently throughout 3.0 basically and were laughing about how they would've reacted if you told them beforehand a set that started SYSF>Light>Fuego would be the best set of the run.

You nailed the gag and that set. I can't think of anything to say about it that doesn't me sound like a casualty so I'll just echo what you said lol

N2 was really incredible energy and really tight. I don't even remember the specifics but I know there were multiples times that night when Trey was just absolutely working the crowd. At some point that night I decided to put in PTO for the next 15 new years. But I was also on the least amount of drugs that night. Night 4 s1 felt like a direct continuation of the night before, s2 I was a little beat but I was first row in the skybridge so I just watched Fishman drum from a perfect angle.

My favorite neighbors were this family with like a 14 year old and a 10 year old who were none of the awful things kids at phish could possibly be. Very good neighbors who knew their Phish and were good at going to Phish. The younger kid was just launching balloons literally all night and the older girl sent a snap of Trey during SANTOS and captioned it "lowkey highkey slaying"

 

Well, they're still on fire. Summer 22 shaping up to compete with 21. That Simple Suite last night was primo

 

Jams are there, flow and sequencing haven’t been. Excited to see what goes down at Deer Creek.

 

TONIGHT

 

great run

 

Summer tour complete. Did Mansfieldx2 Bethelx2 Hartford JBx2 ACx3. Very sore. AC was a great time but I will not be back because that city fucking sucks and I hate dancing in the sand lol

 

Nice run, wow!

I'm also done for the summer. I ended up with:

Mann x2
Jones Beach x2
AC Sunday

Brought me over 90 shows and am now sitting at 93 total. Considering Jones Beach is less than 20 minutes from my house and my Long Beach, NY Phish crew had a 50 person bus, I really hope it's not another nine years before they come back. I get that the venue is inconvenient for public transit (thanks, Robert Moses) but it really is a neat place to see a show.

If I'm picking five jams from the shows I saw:

Atlantic City - YEM (holy moly!)
Mann - Split Open and Melt
Jones Beach - Leaves
Jones Beach - I Never Needed You Like This Before
Mann - Tweezer

 

That YEM was incredible. The cheer from our group when they went back into the funk jam after the vocal jam was insane. Just to throw some other notables out there you didn't mention, not necessarily just jams..

Heavy Rotation at AC2 (please don't wait another 7 years to play that one Page loves it soooo much let Leo shred)

AC1 Ghost that immediately went type 2 and got very weird > Hood with the intro with completely different effects than usual

Don't Doubt Me at JB was also great - I really like that song. Was discussing KV vs SFS and for sure KV has better songs but I think a lot of the time at a show I might prefer to hear an SFS song because all of the ones they've repeated are groovy as hell. I just love to dance. Also went nuts at Most Events Aren't planned the night before.

A Wave of Hope is quickly becoming a favorite, Trey clearly loves it and goes hard every time.

Buuuuuut I think Bethel N2 might have been the show I had the most fun at. Our area on lawn became a straight up mosh pit during FYF, Buffalo Bill, Fire.

 

This is an interesting tour. There are no real clunkers, but there also hasn't been—with the exception of AC N1 or Blossom, maybe?—a show that is a total knockout, instant classic level. Everything is pretty much B+, which is great! I think they're struggling with the mass of new material and how to best incorporate it into the flow of a setlist. I feel like this tour has been awesome for S1 (especially song selection) but a lot of second sets go a little sideways.

Hartford comes to mind, although you're playing with house money after that trio of jams to open S2. JB N1 also comes to mind, because once Everything's Right was in that 3-hole after two huge jams I could only think "oh man, we getting a four or five song second set?" but then they sorta jukebox'd it up.

Just stray observations.

 

Agree completely about Hartford. Trey has to be doing it on purpose when he does Farmhouse>Number Line>Zero right?? And they had already played Yarmouth lol. To be fair getting mad and jokingly (or is it) yelling at Trey for that kinda shit is almost as fun as when they're playing great

 

Dogs in a Pile are the real deal

 

I saw Phish 17 times in 2022 and will most certainly be seeing them at least 12+1 times in 2023

btw its definitely happening, same dates as last time, you didnt hear it from me

 

Yeah, I've had a few well-connected sources who have said it's a lock as far back as a month ago. It has me excited about the prospect of not having to travel far at all to see Phish, but part of the FOMO does stress me out. I went to 11 of the 13 for Baker's, only missing two on account of a family weekend. First world problems to be sure.

This was a wonderful run, and I'd say that 12/30 Set II was the winner of the whole shebang. Once set one ended with the crowd going progressively batshit during Antelope for no goddamn reason (this was SO good), you know it was on. Really, the entire show though. If someone prefers 12/29, I think that's a personal opinion but I'm firmly in the camp of 12/30.

Musically, actual NYE is never really the winner and this year was no different—though I guess fake NYE (whale show) was a glaring exception because it smoked head to toe. A lot of the setlist was just not for me and I know this is about to be sacrilege, but I found the gag to be almost...too busy. Taken altogether, the amount of winks, nods, and what have yous they were able to make to their 40-year career was pretty insane. I just felt like the energy wasn't there in the crowd, but maybe I am wrong...

 

Not a word to disagree with in that post, that moment when the lights went down during Antelope and the place EXPLODED despite it still being squarely in the build up portion...really fucking cool. For me, 12/30 was definitely the best of the run but only a step above 12/29, not much of a gap at all. The gag was fine for me, super fun but not mind blowing. I danced a lot.

I think I have enough friends in the city at this point to do almost all of BD2 without paying for lodging and without outstaying my welcome on any one couch...but we will have to see

 

Video:

 

lol that's the one, also thats my section lmao

 

This fest caught my eye, no way I can go but this is one of the better fest lineups I've seen in terms of quality jam and quality not jam. Dogs in a Pile on a bill with 100 Gecs! Pink Talking Fish and Tyler Childers! Perpetual groove and Tenacious D!

 

Dogs in a Pile tour this week. I think I'm seeing them 5 times from this wednesday to next friday

 

God they are the best band going tbh

 

Holy fucking shit that Carini last night.

 

Listening now instead of working, it’s insane. what I’ve heard of this tour (1/2-2/3rds of it maybe) they’ve been turning mediocre-looking setlists into great shows consistently, which is fun. Saving the crazy setlists for MSG hopefully