http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anz9wz9vmro

Beautifully detailed Summer '97 playing, available in reasonably HQ recordings - a treat for fans of Phish's early funk era, though I don't remember this being a particularly funky show, as such. Just a band audibly and obviously enjoying a chance to play for small festival crowds who hardly know them, and taking the opportunity to dig into not just new material but a new *style* of play. Kind of funny when ya think about it.

This verison of Ghost has some unique "hooting" from Fishman during the last 5 minutes of the song - truly makes it a great version. Unfortunately, this was one of those early versions of Ghost when Trey was over-singing the lyrics. Wicked TASTE to open the set. STASH is also top notch!

I really liked this set. Taste is damn near perfect again, Water in the Sky (slow version remember) is totally worked out for a new song, the Stash is relatively concise but exploratory enough. Theme soars (there it is again, I'm telling you Taste and Theme go hand-in-hand this tour), they regroup for some a capella, and drop the fifth Ghost ever in there and act like they've been playing it for years. LxL is crisp and short-ish as well, like the whole set. At 77 minutes, and available in SBD format, this is the type of show that ten years ago I would've burned to CD and played on road trips and if I didn't write "6/22/97" on it, I would have had no idea the show date because nothing out of the ordinary happens. Yep, this is a super solid set, but there is nothing special here other than the remarkable quality of the recording and the dude who yells "YOU'RE LYING" at Trey when after Stash he compliments their city on being so beautiful. Based on the aerial shots in the video @papadance posted above, I think Trey may have been telling the truth. Moving right along...