Second, and last night at the Capitol Theatre, eighth show of Fall Tour. Interesting how much feedback there still is in the monitors after the previous night. Pretty good recording.

We start off with equipment problems tonight. No bass. So Fishman is hanging out by himself for a minute then they play an ok My Sweet One basically without Mike. They use the pause at the end, which Trey dubs "Capitol Punishment", to remedy the situation. Right into a good Foam. Solid, no real problems, just getting settled in and very dynamic. Stash is really good, nice and tight. Esther has everyone chiming in on the circus theme during the intro. Trey does an offical signal too. Esther itself is good as is Chalk Dust. Rocking as usual. Trey flubbs a pinch of the intro to a standard Sparkle. Fast Enough is quickly getting tight and hot every time they play it. Great song. The creepy ending fades as Fish leads them right into a pretty tight ATR. Trey gets off a pinch in the middle. Mike's is solid but, not very adventurous. Pure rock. Sounds like the smoke machine is on at about six minutes in. Hydrogen has it's usual problems and sounds very tentative. Not very tight at all. Weekapaug is great but again nothing too special, just straight up rock and roll to make a great closer here.

Suzy starts the second set and has Fishman kind of shifting tempos up and down making it a bit disjointed at times. Page rips a sweet solo though. Paul is the other bluegrass call of the night and again Page rips it up. Tweeezer brings the funk with a different type of start and a little rough over the Ebeneezer part. Great jam though. TMWSIY is ok but rough towards the end as this one is kind of rare. Avenu is great and has a great Cactus solo. Fish cuts ahead into a Maze intro leaving the reprise until later. Maze is solid! Page again, and Trey do excellent jobs on their solos. So then we are back to TMWSIY reprise which sounds even more rough than the first installment did. Fish leads them into a supper fast Bouncing, which you can tell Trey is trying to slow down. It remains faster than normal and is average at best. Coil is pretty tight and gives Page another chance to shine. While lost in his solo Trey and Fish switch to go right into a super charged Love You. Complete with band intros, a rocking vacuum solo, and Woody's Gong. Having skipped the intro we have the usual HYHU before the switch back. If that wasn't enough! Oom Pa Pa, Oom Pa Pa...We have ourselves a Harpua! This one musically starts off kind of rough from Page's part, but is great by the end, and has a great continuation of the voyage inside Fish's head from the Forbin's story the night before! Very, very funny stuff from Trey. A second Golgi for this tour gets called up to close the show in style. Nicely done.

So Trey comes out and introduces his Grandma Jean and says Contact is her favorite song. They proceed to murder the intro repeatedly and pretty much the whole song is a funny mess. It almost sounds like Trey left the stage to see his grandma because he is missing from the mix during a lengthy Page solo. They kind of pull it together by the end making it respectable. Tweeprise is very welcome and expected. Good way to wash away the mess Contact left.

Pretty good show tonight. Page really shined in the second set. The rough spots were mostly in the rare songs. Now for a day off, then on to Pittsburgh!

The final show at the beautiful Capitol Theater. I was home from college in California and had spent a few hours the previous night trying to score a ticket. I was unsuccessful, but managed to find one for the following night, which holds up today as an excellent show.

This show encapsulates all the early-years weirdness and goofiness that has become part of the Phish mystique. Rift hadn't been released yet, the Minkin sculptures hung behind the stage and Page wasn't yet playing a grand piano on tour. The first set songs were pretty straightforward, in spite of the technical problems during My Sweet One. I had never heard Mike's Song before this night and this INCREDIBLE version immediately lodged the song in my heart as one of my all time Phish favorites. They used the smoke machine for this 20-minute Mike's Groover, and so much smoke poured out of the thing that it literally enveloped the theater to the point where you couldn't see anything. A must-hear Mike's Groove.

The second set was strange to me. I was surprised to hear a traditional Jewish anthem woven into a beautiful instrumental melody. Tweezer is relatively direct, but after the Bouncing and Coil, things got weird again with Fishman using a gong for Love You. It's the Harpua that really shines in this second set. Trey sarcastically mocks the Spin Doctors, referring to the "hit song on the radio" by playing a few notes of Jimmy Olsen's Blues, which was in the process of getting overplayed on MTV and rock radio in late 1992. Back then, we didn't know that Phish would long far outstrip the Spin Doctors in popularity and longevity.

"Mike Gordan, he is able to produce frequencies you can’t even hear"

Great show.

The Contact sounds weird b/c Trey was slow dancing w/ his grandma on stage.