Best show of Leg 2 so far. Hands down.

I was not at this show. Listened to the recordings after and the Rock and Roll>Ghost combo knocked my socks off. Great jamming and I'm here to break it down.

Rock and Roll

5:00 Lift off jam...
6:30 Trey settles into a very 2.0 sounding chord progression but this eventually gets funky with Mike and
Fishman having some nice interplay.
8:00 Page comes in with the organ and the vibe suddenly shifts..he lays some piano over it and Gordo drops some dark riffs.
9:10 Mike starts dropping bombs with his meatball. At this point it gets very funky, Trey is basically just playing rhythm lines with Mike and Fish leading the charge
10:20 Trey and Page have some nice interplay here with arpeggios from Trey.
11:00 Trey settles on a riff and Mike comes in with a great bass line.
11:30 Trey plays a melody over the progression they have built. Trey has some delays going on. Mike throws a meatball bomb in there.
12:00 Fishman keeps a beat but its gets spacey. More meatball soul shaking bombs from Mike. Page on his keyboard(fukouka style…clav?moog?).
13:00 Page finds a riff on his Rhodes. I feel like Page has done this during jams in the Alpine Fee and Blossom Twist; everyone kind of fades to space and he continues the beat and finds a nice sounding progression. The rest of the band just builds on it, Trey is especially patient during this segment.
14:45 Transient Phish style jamming. Trey being extremely patient and Fishman coming in with creative and polyrhythmic fills.
15:30 Trey takes charge with a blissful yet driving melody. Personally love this segment of jamming.
18:30 Trey starts to reach for some chords and him and Page build a nice little crescendo to keep the jam driving
19:10 Trey comes in with some a nice line that reminds me of 2/28/03 Tweezer, redirecting the jam.
21:00 Jam climaxes a bit but Gordo and Fishman refuse to let the beat die.
21:32 Mike puts on some delay, Trey scratches, Fishman becomes very percussive. This jam reminded me of '96 type of weird percussive jam..then it took a turn into storage jam territory. Some seriously amazing stuff coming out of this segment.
23:00-Fishman drops out, Mike on meatball, Trey making Floyd calls..very storage jam -esque. Fishman
working in various beats and fills
24:30-Trey starts these "Izabella" type dissonant riffs...settles into space.

Fans of Fishman should love the latter segment of this jam

Ghost
3:30 Lift off jam. Some unique jamming with Trey trills and tasty Mike basslines.
4:40 Jam settles in. Page plays some great lines on his Rhodes. Then things get a bit weird but stay cohesive. Everyone starts to play outside just a bit and then come back together.
6:10 Seriously thick groove starts to appear here. Fishman just locks in and the band is locked in tight.
7:10 Trey comes in with some trills and Gordo really steps it up a notch here, locking into Fishman and driving the beat.
7:52 Trey comes in with some power chords and solidifies the new progression.
8:22 Page goes off on the said progression, Trey follows and hose is unleashed. The jam is very gin-esque. And energy continues to build.
10:00 Flashes of machine gun Trey. With Page holding the organ and hammering the keys the jam really takes off.
11:16 Massive peak. Trey plays a triplet pattern and some very nice fills.
11:24 Empathetic chords from Trey that lead into a vamp
12:00 Fishman changes the beat and Mike drops his bass down and the jam suddenly becomes dark. Mike has this marching beat and Fishman comes in with some Roggae quotes as the jam ends with 30 seconds of weirdness, especially Fishman’s fills and Treys wall of noise. Trey kind of emerges with the limb x limb progression and it’s onward. . .

I felt the Ghost jam is really a Gin jam, the way it builds. Hose!

There's your 20+ minute jam!

I'm gonna go ahead and say that this was the best so cal show of 3.0...
the second set was just incredible. amazing night

Great show - first set was very solid, the guelah was good to hear, the Bathtub was one of the better I've heard in awhile and the Quinn the Eskimo was actually pretty smoking.

Of course...second set was pretty amazing from a jamming stand point. Haven't heard them get this outside the box in a long time. It almost looks like 97 or 98 setlist...sounds like it too. Great night, i can't wait to relisten to this show.

highly enjoyable first set highlighted by a raging gin (spec fishman) and a great lil Quinn closer.

RIDIC second set with an astoundingly creative and experimental Rock N Roll, a raging Ghost and a especially impressively played Guyute.

top it off with a fun Julius encore and that my friends is how you start a leg 2.

what a second set, man.... good things are in store

first set was a big letdown for me and had me worried a bit during setbreak. Then they dropped possibly the best sequence of 2012 thust far.. r&r-->ghost 45+mins of the phish from vermont absolutely locked in. and the beautiful thing is the ghost jam picked up right where r&r jam leftoff. They could of left the stage right then and there and I would of been happy as shit. but they didn't and put down an above average lxl. Then came the far above average Hood annother must hear. For me the first and second sets were like two totally different shows. if you haven't heard rock n roll into ghost do urself a favor and go listen, i cant put it into words.. sign of things to come

RnR was ridiculous!!

Brought a friend for his first phish show. Parking lot was chill and weather was nice, doesn't get much better than that. I know everybody is raging about the second set which I absolutely loved, but I was floored by the first set. I thought Kill Devil Falls was incredible and I was so stoked to hear a Halloween 98' song. Bathtub Gin went off and I know everbody has been down on Quinn but that was pretty stellar. The second set was a lot of spacey Jammy stuff, which will satisfy all of the people who cry " they don't jam anymore". I was super excited to hear dirt and limb by limb was solid. It looked like they were pulling ripcord on Hood and I could hear murmurs in the crowd like here we go again, then they went back into it and ended it with some oomph. So much for the idea of a warm up show, on to San Francisco, wooo

Not only am I astonished by the band's performances, but one thing I noticed and was impressed by was their song flow. Last year's bit of summer shows I caught felt like the songs were being crammed in and deprived the setlist of time to stretch out in one certain tune. This second set didn't have many songs and certainly wasn't chalk full of Trey trying to load in a bunch of songs at his disposal. It flowed SO so well. I'm so happy I got to catch this beautiful one-off gem before the three nights in San Francisco. Happy phishing everyone!!!

They gave us what we wanted with that 20+ RnR.. Something tells me there will be more standouts to come.. Great start to the 2nd leg.

My oh my..this Rock and Roll>Ghost! Second set aside for a minute, I really enjoyed the first set as well. Knowing that it was the first set back from the short break in summer tour, I was definitely expecting them to come out and sort of warm it up for a bit. I liked the Suzy opener choice, a good way for Phish to sort of throw it back in our faces while we all tried to guess what kind of crazy Leg 2 opener we'd get. Someone near us made a suggestion that they were doing a 'backwards show,' starting with the encore. That would have been cool..anyway I really dug the first set. Some good jams, but nothing exceptional to write home about. First set highlights; Cool It Down, Stash, Bathtub Gin

Now on to the second set. Anytime Phish launches into RnR, it feels special to me. Maybe because the last RnR that I saw was the Gorge (8/5/11), but I had a feeling from the start that this could be something big. About 10 minutes into RnR and things start to get groovy. What makes this RnR special to me is that the band really puts themselves out there and experiments with new sounds and grooves. They took a lot of chances, and it paid off. Experiencing this live was unbelievable. Anytime it seemed like they might be tapering off and about to launch into a new song, they just turned a musical corner and continued into new space with the jam. They explored so many different melodies and kept adding layers to an already astounding jam.

When RnR finally wrapped up after 25 minutes of near-perfect ambient-style jamming and dropped into Ghost, I nearly lost my sh*t. It was the perfect song to continue the groove. I thoroughly enjoyed the Ghost, and when LxL came, I thought it was the most perfect placement for a LxL. Guyute always gets me going; there's something about the composed pieces of music that I absolutely love. This Guyute was executed quite well, and I think it adds a lot of energy to the set.

Dirt. If there had to be a slow song in this set, Dirt is definitely it. I couldn't have asked for a more appropriate slow song to cool it off for a few minutes before that Hood. I actually remember saying, "Are they gonna play a slow song?? I need to stop dancing so hard." Dirt will always work for me, it's a pretty song and I enjoy the message it sends. Closing the set with Hood>GTBT...I don't think I need to say anything else.

Probably one of the best second sets of 3.0. It will definitely get compared to the Crosseyed sandwich from 8/19/12 and that whole second set, but as I re-listen to this show, I'm slowing moving it closer to the top of my list. There seems to be a real FLOW in this set that perhaps wasn't totally in the 8/19 second set..either way, both pieces of music are outstanding and worth a listen. I like the Julius encore, getting the phans ready to rage for 3 nights in SF. Rock on people!

Of the entire west coast swing, this was the best show overall in my humble opinion.
The first set was above average with excellent versions of Gin and Quinn.
The second set reached a level I haven't witnessed since Pine Knob last summer.
From start to finish this is arguably a more complete performance than Pine Knob and superior to San Francisco night three.
The second set had an uninterrupted flow from start to finish. I consider it one piece of music rather than seven songs.
It is the reason I keep coming back for more.

I've got one word for you: underrated. This is the most underrated show of 2012. As far as I'm concerned, the three best shows of 2012 are Dick's 1, SF 3, and the one you're reading about, and not necessarily in that order. The first set contains letter perfect performances of both Kill Devil Falls and Stash. Neither are the best versions of 2012, but each are perfectly played type I versions. They're so perfect they could have been used as the studio versions. The rest of the set is just good old school fun. That set actually looks, for the most part, like it came right out of Summer '94.

Set two's opening trio, which constitutes well over half the length of the set, is as good a jam sequence as you will find in 2012. I have not heard a more blissful jam than this Rock and Roll. It's not necessarily the most ambient (Fukuoka set II), patient (half the jams from Cypress), or minimalistic (also Fukuoka set II), but I'll be damned if there is a jam that features more empathetic and beautiful playing from Trey and Page. There's a solid 10+ minutes in the middle of this jam where Trey and Page just play these absolutely gorgeous melodies back and forth over a superb foundation laid down by Mike and Fish. After that it dissolves into five minutes of awesome and eery space.

Following Rock and Roll is one of my three favorite 3.0 Ghosts (along with MSG '10 and Albany '09). While I wouldn't call the transition from the Rock and Roll jam into Ghost a segue, the two songs fit together perfectly, like two puzzle pieces. The Rock and Roll jam delicately fades out and Trey delicately starts chunking Ghost, it's absolutely superb. The jam itself is great and the ending features some sick playing from Fish. The Limb to follow foreshadows the hose that would go down in St. Louis 13 days later. This Limb isn't anywhere near as good as the St. Louis version, but it is way better than average and has a different energy than most. The beginning of jams of these two versions actually sound quite similar. The rest of the set is gravy. A very well played Guyute, a great Hood, and a rockin' closer. It would be unreasonable to ask for more.

This is must hear Phish.

Wow. Wish I could've seen this one.
I'd be as happy as a pig in dirt

Also, there has been some discussion as to whether Cool It Down is a bustout or not. After looking up the stats;

Played seven times in phistory
played 1 in 51 shows since its debut

That right there qualifies for bustout status

Now, granted they have played the song twice this summer, once in 2010 and once in 2009, one might be able to make an argument for perennial.

But it is still a bustout song and great to hear! Thank you Phish!

How about perennial bustout?

I wasn't at the show, but I am deep into Rock & Roll as I write this, and things are getting tropical..

Brought a friend for his first phish show. Parking lot was chill and weather was nice, doesn't get much better than that. I know everybody is raging about the second set which I absolutely loved, but I was floored by the first set. I thought Kill Devil Falls was incredible and I was so stoked to hear a Halloween 98' song. Bathtub Gin went off and I know everbody has been down on Quinn but that was pretty stellar. The second set was a lot of spacey Jammy stuff, which will satisfy all of the people who cry " they don't jam anymore". I was super excited to hear dirt and limb by limb was solid. It looked like they were pulling ripcord on Hood and I could hear murmurs in the crowd like here we go again, then they went back into it and ended it with some oomph. So much for the idea of a warm up show, on to San Francisco, wooo

great great great show, but where was the bieber tease that everyone was talking about, please let me know

This show was amazing. First set was high energy and well executed.

Second set was...well...just listen to it. Unreal.

Well done boys.

Storage Jam appearance in this jam?

I finally realized the meaning.

From this time forth, Phish are going to be so great on a consistent basis that you do not have enough storage on your computer or even in the hours of your life to hear it all. If you thought the past was great, get a load of what's likely to come next!

They're promoting Hampton '97 with long jams this year, and the jams are incredibly meaningful again and again. Hell, there's that moment Mike Gordon had where the compositions and jams blended into perfect balance and he had something like a religious experience. Now we get this chapter of Phish that conveys that feeling in a way I can appreciate.

I'm listening for the first time, and I'm at the first spacey turn of the jam, and it's really questing and gorgeous. I love Phish 2012!

My Beer was the first to be spilled on the floor page side where everyone was sitting sorry boys and girls. had a blast though now im home just listened to it awesome show. sorry about the wet floor for an hour brfore the opener but i came back and trid to clean it up.

As amazing as the R&R>Ghost is (and it really....REALLY is...) the Gin is clearly the highlight of Set I.

Check out this Gin: I'm hearing some "Tequila" teases from Page (and Mike joins in) beginning at 3:59...and then this jam wastes no time. Trey stays within the theme and even quotes it over the next couple of minutes, but Fishman quickly tightens up the beat and leans into the high-hat a little more, and the rest of them follow into an aggressive tear through the next portion. Trey gives us some of his classic tremolo that usually signals the end--but then we get another build up (ending with some great, really uncharacteristic improv!!!) which carries over into the very last run-through of the phrase before returning to the jam. In these last few moments before the theme returns, the bass is especially stunning!! This Gin is one of the best examples of collective (i.e., not "Trey-led" or "DoMIKEnated") jamming I've seen from this band.

I heard that Ghost-like jamming pre-Ghost too, @fabolous2203.

this HOOD hasn't been mentioned enough. i believe it to be the most dynamic, interesting, and all-around ENGAGING Hood since 2003... and i saw Worcester and Dick's as well.

phenomenal type-2 jamming, with a full breakdown to near-silence, a raging build-up to a sonic space COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than your typical Hood peak, and then... perfect slam into the old-school Hood ending chords, with a little extra energy to boot.

first listened while driving through the Rocky Mountains west of Denver, and you better believe i had the most ridiculous shiz-eating grin on my face the whole time. listen and be amazed!

First set solid as could be. You could tell they were feelin the groove. Then.......Second set blew me away! Jam heaven!

Almost positive in the middle of that Rock n Roll they teased the Ghost, then waited 15 minutes till they brought It up to bat.

Thanks again for the stream mmm_phish. I am glad you brought the external battery. I am lucky to have heard this show last night! Second set was incredible!

I made sure not to wear shoes. I made sure not to not be in front. I made sure not to not not leave withought the blisters on me feet.... I would like to not, not, never not convey that that the suzy was illustrious. And don't never not say that I Am correct in expressing my gratitude.

@Hose_jam I totally agree re: Ghost jam sounding Gin-like. The crowning point I've played for a few friends in "mystery jam" style and their first guess was Gin. That seque into LxL was nasty, even if not the smoothest.

Unfortunately, I have only been able to make it socal shows over the years. With money and family it hasn't worked out. We get good shows here in socal, but nothing that stands out above anything else.
We finally got one! You could feel it through out the night that everyone could feel the energy.
From beginning to end the best socal show I've ever seen! Sucks that I have to likely wait another year to see my favorite group of musicians...

How 'bout that Hood? I was spinning the show on the way to the beach yesterday with a carload of kiddoes raising a ruckus and trying to catch a sneak preview before we get home and I can slap on the headphones and really dive into the goo, when Gordo's snarly bass filter silenced the little monkeys and I got a good 13 minutes of bliss. Always amazes me how some versions of some songs just have the "pop." I can't define it, but I always know it when its there.

Rock and Roll > Ghost is must hear all-star Phish. The longest song of 3.0 (so far) and then a sublime Ghost with a peak that reminded me of the 12/31/10 version. Absolute awesome stuff. First time shooting the band in the pit -- then they delivered a jam that most won't soon forget. A memorable night to say the least! Photo Gallery is below http://livemusicblog.com/2012/08/16/review-photos-phish-long-beach-arena-long-beach-ca-81512/

this show was awesome as everyone has said. must add that the hood was potentially played for a 4th grader for their 4th show as a sign page side of the soundboard under the seats read. still taking requests !

I've been on the train since '93. Growin' up right up the hill from Red Rocks didn't hurt. Last years Hollywood Bowl show, although good, didn't have the expected energy. Unique venue, but left wanting. Long Beach brought me back!! Fun and exceptionally energetic crowd for SoCal! Good small venue, too. Second set was ridiculous! Only complaint, and it's a not a bad complaint to have by any means, is that there were a few repeats from the Bowl. Cities (which has recently started becoming one of my fav's), Kill Devil Falls, Quinn the Eskimo, and closin' with the Julius @ both. Again, not complainin' (at least not much! LoL).

Since I moved to Cali I only really get one show a year, but man, this was a great one. The first set was unbelievable. Opening with Suzy and Cities was a lot of fun, both got us all going having an awesome time, then they laid down an amazing Kill Devil Falls. This KDF was so far superior to last year at the Hollywood Bowl that it's not even worth talking about. The growing power in this jam was something really special. I was super pumped to get a Guelah right after this, as was everyone else (or so it seemed to me). The Cool It Down bustout was totally unexpected, but good. If we only knew they were just giving us a little break! The Rift / Stash back-to-backer had me furiously dancing and rocking out. There was an amazing vibe in the arena that you just had to feel to know (you guys know what I mean). Solid Bouncing (short as always) followed by the always crowd-pleasing Bathtub and a satisfying Quinn. Overall, this is one of the best sets I've ever seen live.

My buddies were a little disappointed with the second set, but I really dug the jams after the high-energy first set. RnR was a great way to kick things off, and then they settled into a really groovy Ghost. Limb also surprised me, pleasantly, and meshed well with the Guyute follow-up. Dirt for some people isn't what they want to hear live, but I love that song and I was happy to see it, especially in that part of the show. Of course, as with Cool It Down, we were just getting a break before a nasty, funktastic Hood and a solid GTBT closer.

It's my first review, so I don't want to create a rep as a whiner. I'm not one of those people as I think you see above. But I have to say that the Julius encore was a bit of a downer, if only because I've literally heard Julius live more than any other song. It's fun, it was a fun encore, don't get me wrong. Maybe they just know I'm in the house and think I love Julius I guess I should appreciate the awesome show instead of saying I wished they would have given us a second song or a YEM encore, right?

Seriously, this show rocked in a big way. I'm glad to be here with what seems like a really good group of fans.

My first indoor PHISH experience was one to remember. Long Beach Arena was ready the boys were ready and Leg II immediately had potential. I will save the best jam, best set, best show arguments to the rest of you fine pholks. I had a damn good time!

My first indoor PHISH experience was one to remember. Long Beach Arena was ready the boys were ready and Leg II immediately had potential. I will save the best jam, best set, best show arguments to the rest of you fine pholks. I had a damn good time!

To say this was an improvement over the last SoCal show is a massive understatement. A sampling of what to look for in this show:

Set 1:
Bustout-Cool it Down
Big Energy-Stash
Extended Jam-Gin
Fast and Ferocious-KDF

Set 2:
Bustout (at least a rarity)-Dirt
Big Energy-Guyute
Extended Jam-Rock N' Roll>Ghost
Fast and Ferocious-Good Times Bad Times
2.0 Flashback (Trey's tone)-Hood