, attached to 2000-06-14

Review by mojorisin

mojorisin Copied over from CookiePuss' review from LivePhish.com
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This was the favorite show that I ever attended. The day was beautiful after a few days of rain in Japan. The venue was in the thick of downtown Fukuoka and there were tons of extras because not a lot of folks wanted to take the six hour train ride (even on the Shinkansen) from Nagoya the night before to get there. The small venue was painted entirely in black, the crowd was primarily Japanese. Folks go in by ticket number in Japan and I very fortuitously had #10 so I got a spot right in front of Trey on the rail. The vibe inside was at first a little raucous with excitement but due to the song choice and the obvious thoughtful vibe of the band both in playing and stage presence the crowd settled down almost immediately. What followed was extraordinary to behold in person. I have NEVER been to any "rock" concert where everyone was so quiet. People were intently listening and the symbiosis between band and audience was perfect. Loud applause at precisely the right moment, dead silence otherwise. The beginning of the second set felt like seeing Phish in a rehearsal and was almost obscenely intimate. The band interplay was so telepathic and the audience so enraptured that the room started to feel downright holy. It was wondrous to witness and everybody knew it. When the lights came on after the show, nobody moved. They, including myself, were entranced; it was just that hypnotic and magical. It was like a spell had been broken and we had come back to earth/Kansas/Kansai(?).

I had dinner with a new Japanese friend I met that night that would become the best man at my wedding three years later in Japan. I met my wife-to-be the next night in Osaka after the show. She's a Japanese and we have traveled back to Japan many times since then to visit the friends I met there on that tour and they have come to the U.S. many times to travel and of course see Phish. To get a feel for what the show was like, listen by yourself cause it was one of those nights that the material world pleasantly disappeared and the self was transported to the astral plane. Domo Arigatou Gozaimasu, Sakana-bandu ("Phish-band" in Japanese)


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