Wednesday, 12/02/2009
Madison Square Garden, New York, NY
Set 1: AC/DC Bag > Chalk Dust Torture, Wolfman's Brother > NICU, Ocelot, Brian and Robert, Poor Heart, Sample in a Jar, Peaches en Regalia > The Divided Sky, Cavern
Set 2: Golgi Apparatus > Light > Slave to the Traffic Light > Tweezer > Joy, Sparkle > Harry Hood > Wading in the Velvet Sea, Suzy Greenberg > Run Like an Antelope[1]
Encore: A Day in the Life > Tweezer Reprise
[1] Lyrics changed to "Been you to have any Mike?"
Notes: Peaches was played for the first time since September 24, 1999 (186 shows). The lyrics to Antelope were changed to "Been you to have any Mike, man?".
This show was part of the "2009 Fall Tour."
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Who was there? Show 386 Attendees
386 Phish.netters attended.

Score: 5
Attached to 2009-12-02
The Light -> Slave -> Tweezer was great. Light went everywhere.
Score: 2
Attached to 2009-12-02
Trey looked like he was having a blast all night, from Chalkdust on. Dancing and smiling and doing little leg moves. Eating it up (letting little grins sneak out as he was waiting during the Divided pause).
I should ass that the "transition" into Wading was really botched. Page seemed to lose his fingers and Trey was singing in the wrong key.
Good show, not great. Although nothing beats Phish in the Garden . . .
Score: 2
Attached to 2009-12-02
Great high energy openers followed by a funky wolfman's provided a great jumping off point for the band's triumphant return to MSG. I've been defending Ocelot as a personal favorite recently against the growls of some phriends, but I can't say I disagree with their assertion that the song is stretched somewhat. I personally like the whining guitar solo at its inception but dont think they should escalate it to an arena rock level as they seem to do relentlessly these days. Crowd uninvolved in brian & robert, poor heart lacked a trey solo but he nailed the final riff. Sample was broken when trey missed a chord, but they made up for it with a gift of Peaches en Regalia...hadn't been played in over a decade!
Score: 2
Attached to 2009-12-02
straight forward ripping show from start to finish...this was not a sloppy party like philly and albany, but more rather a wed night in new york that blew the doors down
this will be the show you reach for over and over come winter time, screw the setlist junkies, if you really want to hear a tight show, play this one
Score: 2
Attached to 2009-12-02
Score: 1
Attached to 2009-12-02
Last night many of the best parts of jams were in the more medium energy section of the jams. Ocelot in particular, Trey was really sick towards the end. I've definitely seen better shows in my day, but I had a blast.
MSG rules!
Score: 1
Attached to 2009-12-02
Score: 1
Attached to 2009-12-02
Definitely a great show, one of the hardest rocking I've seen, and they totally redeemed themselves for the last show I saw (Columbia, MD - the worst I've ever been to).
Additionally, I just knocked off a 4-year goal and qualified for the Boston Marathon by running Philadelphia on November 22nd. That morning as I walked to the starting line, I put my full 160gb iPod on shuffle and somehow, the first song to come up was a mammoth 22-minute Run Like An Antelope. I ditched the iPod at the start, but that song and memories of great times at those shows was all I needed to groove on for the next 3 hours. Needless to say, the end of the second set last night felt really special. I'm so thankful to have these guys back and to have this community of music fans.
Score: 0
Attached to 2009-12-02
Score: 0
Attached to 2009-12-02
Score: 0
Attached to 2009-12-02
Second set is tremendous fun! Light is as good as you've heard, though I'll probably return more often to the blissful Gorge version; Tweezer is a high-energy guitar explosion straight out of 1995; Hood is fine; and Antelope shreds nicely. The highlight is the Light > etc. > Joy run, as you'd imagine. Yeah, Wading kicks off a little awkwardly, but so what? The boys love playing that song and it's a tearjerker (remember Coventry? SPAC '04? or even 7/2/97?!). And few bands are as fleet of foot as Phish - little errors are opportunities for these guys.
If you're wondering how this show compares to the previous two or three, the answer is 'The way to compare shows is to hear them and endeavour to love them all.' That said, the second set starts off powerfully, and lately you get the sense there's some powerful synthesis just beyond the horizon. We've had that sense all year, of course. It's getting stronger though. And the best moments of this show are very, very fine indeed.
Score: 0
Attached to 2009-12-02
Score: 0
Attached to 2009-12-02
Score: -1
Attached to 2009-12-02
Guess I'm just thinking about the few youngsters who "do tour." I can't imagine seeing the same songs over and over throughout the course of a longish tour. I understood when they announced the return that songs would be played "until they got it right" or something to that effect. But really? Are the songs in current rotation going to eventually be pared down to 20 or 30 selections, rote recital replacing the spontaneous manifest destiny setlist of yore?
Sorry this isn't a proper review but it's a feeling I've been having for a while now and curious if anyone else shares it.
Score: -1
Attached to 2009-12-02
the crowd was on the young side (definitely felt like an old-timer), and i was surprised by the realization that phish will be around for many more years to come: it’s just slightly different incarnations of the same thing as time passes (think phish in the 90s => the dead in the 70s, phish today => the dead in the 80s).