this show is stacked. i am not a huge fan of '99 phish. there are a few good shows in the summer, and the fall/winter tour was pretty much a wash, outside of the spectrum shows, imo. then there is the september 99 shows; the glorious exception to the rule. this one kind of gets overshadowed by the neighboring shoreline show with the big phil lesh guest spot, but personally, i'll take the chula vista show.

tweezer opens this one up in fine form. this is not the longest version in the world, but it has some nice funky explorations. roses are free follows it up nicely, and wilson gets the crowd in a rocking mood. then maze really lights this one up. trey and page bounce back and forth like maniacs before bringing this one home. not a big b&r fan, but this one gives everyone a well deserved cool down. tube brings the funk back in fine form, and transitions nicely and somewhat comically into rocky top.

after a very funky first set, the boys came out blazing in a ripping boogie on. this or the cuyahoga falls '00 are neck and neck for best pre hiatus boogie on. they leave the normal "song" part, and they just keep bouncing along until they have drifted into uncharted waters, and nobody handles uncharted waters quite like phish! after some heavy funk jamming, they eventually find their way into meatstick. i'm not too into this song but the free that follows works very well. trey takes over the middle section, while fish just pounds away. the bouncing that follows completes a some what odd 3 song pairing. harry hood really does the job before driving into a rowdy frankenstein. oh yeah, check out pages playing through out hood...bueno. cavern, as always, serves as a great set closer.

this is one of those rare shows were they are really nailing things in both sets, from start to finish. the playing is sharp, and the set list is superb. great show.

highlights:

set 1:
tweezer, maze, tube

set 2:
boogie on(must hear), free, harry hood

As the previous review suggests, this Boogie On - in an era of not so many Boggie Ons - is simply a must hear version, boasting a stellar funk jam and over twenty-minutes of audio pleasure.

this was my very first phish concert. I walked in during tweezer, and I remember that moment very well--amazing.

The most memorable moment for me was the meatstick > free > bouncing > hood. I don't know if you call that just a moment, but it felt like a moment... a very amazing moment, that ended with lots of hood glowsticks. The venue was awesome, and I really wish phish would play there again someday.

PS. It should be noted somewhere that it was at this show that they decided to teach the west coast crowd the Meatstick for the first time... they brought ppl up on stage for it, etc. LISTEN!

Of all the reasons to be grateful that the spreadsheet exists (speaking as an obsessive Dylan bootleg collector during the B&P/super-slow CD burner era, there are many indeed), I personally think that the biggest reason is that you will find yourself listening to shows that you wouldn't make the effort to seek out if they weren't a mouse click and 10/15 minutes away. And, again speaking as an obsessive Dylan bootleg collector, the second biggest reason is that you can have your own "pet shows", the ones that a) you hang on to as your own secret, the show that you know is a classic on a Bomb Factory/Island Tour/UIC 2011 level, or b) you trumpet to everyone you can find that THIS is a pantheon Phish show, and if you'd only listen to it instead of 6/22/94 for the 200th time you'd be able to find out for yourself. And this, to me, is as much a part of the Phish experience as anything else; the act of *discovery*, which can happen quite often with a band that has played this many damn shows.

I don't doubt that I haven't told you all anything you know already, but I still had to tell you anyway, because I'm about to go Option B on you and say that this is (IMO, of course) one of the great Phish shows, one of my personal favorites, and a show that I will probably keep stumping for official release as long as I remain a Phish fan. Sadly, with the release of the Boogie On on the last From The Archives, that seems entirely unlikely now (FTA will release songs from shows already released all the time, but have yet to go the opposite route); at least that jam, which pretty much everyone knows or should know is one of the year's finest, is now readily available in pristine sound. Thank goodness for small favors, I suppose.

By this point in their evolution Phish had smoothed out the darker, more razor-sharp edges of the Fall '97 funk sound, replacing it with more spaciness (or ambiance, if you want), and that is perfectly heard in the Tweezer here, a close relative to the brilliant 8/1/98 version. It's not the longest version in the world (although I don't think that's as big a deal as someone else might), but it locks into a really mellow, blissful groove right out of the "Uncle Ebenezer" verse and stays there all throughout. The Boogie On has already been touched on (I think the term "hose jam" fits quite nicely for it), and those two songs alone would put this show in some pretty strong company, but there's also a blissful Harry Hood that leads into an always welcome Frankenstein, a super funky Tube, and a really fun Roses > Wilson > Maze stretch in Set 1 to serve as icing on the cake. And there's Meatstick, but it can't all be perfect, right?

Whenever I think of 1999, The Year That Phish Forgot (even the big summer festival doesn't seem to get any love), the first thing that pops to mind is Big Cypress, the second thing is 12/11 (my pick for show of the year), and then 9/18, a very strong second place and the crown jewel of Fall 1999, maybe the greatest underrated tour of them all. And I wouldn't have thought about it at all without the spreadsheet. Thank you, Phish, and thank you, Kevin Hoy.

Who would argue with a Tweezer opener? Sometimes when they open with a song that’s usually a second set song I get worried. They haven’t warmed up yet, it’s light out, and people aren’t buzzed up yet so there’s a possibility that the song will kind of suck and then they just played a song that I would have loved to see in the second set. I worry too much. This was a good Tweezer and a great way to start the show. One of the best things about Tweezer is that you know you’re gonna get that Tweeprize at the end of the night. Next of note is the Tube! I’ve listened to this Tube a lot. It’s amazing how much slower this sounds than modern day Tubes. I think by this time in Phish history they were starting to get away from the cow funk but this Tube definitely brings it. The Boogie On to start the second set is, of course, a lot of fun and totally awesome. I kind of like Meatstick but I don’t really like the whole dance instruction and how the song drags on forever. Now they also do the Japanese lyrics which makes it drag on for another 5 minutes. This Free is great. Free was always one of my top 5 or 3 Phish songs. I remember hearing it for the first time in 3.0 and thinking to myself “what the fuck just happened...why did the song just end.” I still have hope that they’ll bring it back to the monster it once was. The rest of the show was pretty standard but I must say that I really like the Contact->Tweeprise encore.

Much has been said about this outstanding ~22minute "Boogie On", but I'd like to add that they do a jam very similar to the outstanding 7/10/99 Chalk Dust about 5 minutes from the end, right before they return to the song structure to close the jam. Good stuff.

The Tube from this show is also out of this world and there's some good banter during Meatstick.