Although the 2nd set is rightly considered one of the all-time great Phish jams, the first set also contains excellent playing. Trey's soloing in Llama, Divided Sky, and FEFY suggest he is already thinking about pushing the boundaries of the songs and the setlist. The jam out of Horn and a huge Split Open and Melt also feature a group improv approach that would fully flower in the second set. I love this arrangement of If I Could where the rest of the band drops out and Page gets to shine on the piano. The solos in Suzy Greenberg are fun, with Page on the Rhodes, then Trey on his wah-wah. And when Trey says, "don't do anything we wouldn't do", things are only going to get crazier.

I studied music at the University of North Texas from 1993-96, and I knew a couple guitarists who were planning on going to this show (The previous week was finals week). I didn't hear about the legend of this show until I came back and talked to the two guitarists, who now had Hoist and Rift on cd and Phish stickers on their guitar cases. It sounded cool, but I was skeptical. A couple months into that semester, I heard Junta and fell in love.

As with many fans, the second set of this show was one of the first sets I heard on cassette. This noob loved all the covers of classic rock songs that I was familiar with, and I still appreciate the band's approach to covering other artists. Listening to it today, I can hear the band's confidence in their musicianship taking a step forward from 12/31/93 and 8/13/93. This show makes a great LivePhish release, and even if the band never plays another note, I'll always have 5/7/94 to lift me back to the heavens.