We stashed our stashes in a locker at the greyhound bus station in Buffalo. We headed to the venue empty. My friend managed to find a sack after much searching.

Sloth was a rare, nice treat.

This was a good show, but after the AWESOMENESS of Oswego, any show would have seemed lackluster. I cannot comprehend, for the life of me, why I read so many negative reviews of Oswego. 7-17-99 might be one of the best 2-set shows Phish has ever played (for setlist awesomeness and jamming!!! It really all came together).

We crossed back into Buffalo to get our supplies. I tried my key in the locker, but it wouldn't open. A police officer came up to me and asked if I needed help. I told him I think I owed money on the locker. He walked me down a narrow hallway to a tiny room with a desk and a man behind it. I gave the man two dollars, and the police officer escorted me back to the locker. Needless to say, I'm a bit nervous about the whole goddamn thing at this point. The officer opened up the locker, and I grabed a cooler. I could HEAR glass clinking together inside the cooler, but it must not have aroused any suspicion in the mind of the law. I walked out quickly, got in the car where my buds were waiting, and we got the phuck out of Buffalo!

I miss touring.
I miss the funk.
It's still good to be alive though.

The boys sure put on strong shows in Toronto, huh? The show highlight might be the jumbo Ghost in the first set, which wades patiently through standard low-key Phish funk (maybe a little more fleet than usual?) before building up a head of steam and topping out in a roaring late-century Phish climax that's no less affecting for being familiar to every Phish fan. The YEM jam is mostly three-way porno-funk, with Trey hanging out in relaxed fashion atop the wah pedal. When Page hops from the clav/Rhodes to the acoustic piano Trey starts to get freaky and his bandmates are happy to join him; the result is standard-wonderful YEM material, even if it ends without any old-school 'hose' (or a bass/drums jam!). The nightly setlist oddity is the Zep cover: exhilarating, but (to be mercilessly frank) you can safely bypass it in favour of Phish's thematically-similar 11/27/09 cover of Golden Age (by Brooklyn style-nerds TV on the Radio). The rest of the second set is tremendously engaging (and engaged) stuff though, particularly the multifaceted Twist > Moma pairing. Check out Trey's gleeful impatience at the opening of 2001 too!

What I've heard of Oswego doesn't flip my lid, but there's some phenomenal Summer '99 stuff out there - start with the next night's Simple > Toe > Caspian if you need convincing. On the other hand, why would you need convincing?