It's all about context for me. This Bowie starts off dark and evil, gaining strength like a hurricane. You can feel the tension. Then like any good horror film, panic sets in. Clumsily fumbling from room to room in the dark, senses dulled, while other senses are heightened you lose track of where you are. You reach out to feel for a door, wall, anything. But your arms flail about in the darkness. The panic you felt in the back of your head has now contorted itself around the sides of your head, resting in the very uncomfortable spot right in between your eyebrows. The pain is seering. Your eyes water. You grab your head hoping the pressure will alleviate some of the pain so you can think. You hear a noise behind you, then in front of you. Did something just touch your neck? What is that resting on my foot?

You hear a crack, BOOM!. The entire room feels as if it was hit with a sledgehammer. Vertigo sets in, you fall back luckily against the wall you were frantically searching for moments ago. The room shakes again, then again, you huddle on the floor, head in between your knees. You try to scream but nothing comes out. You try again, and again, nothing. Then, it is as if someone heard your pleas for this nightmare to end. The noises abruptly end. The seering pain in your head has vanished without a trace. Light filters in through windows you had no idea were there. thick, golden rays of light illuminate the walls, moving across the floor filling the room with the very light you begged for. Dark mahogany floors reflect the life giving light all over the room. As the last tears you had to shed rest on your eye lashes like a child afraid to jump off the dock you feel this overwhelming feeling in your chest. This warmth starting dead center expands outward, downward and up through your neck. You barely even realized that you are standing again. It feels as if you blinked and you are stepping out of a doorway, you never knew existed, into a world filled with colors so bright the world in front of you looks like something that has been assembled.

This warmth has consumed your entire body now, and you feel this draw towards the sun. This obsession with letting this warmth inside of you out. Release. This draw has your legs moving faster, as you didn't even realize you were walking, now running. You are sprinting through a green field. The sun on the horizon is calling you. Smiling at you as you make your way towards her. You are moving so fast you feel as if you're rotating the earth with hamster power. The wind you're running into has no friction. In fact, you can feel as if it is rallying behind you, propelling you towards your goal. The sun. The grass you are running through feels like a bouncy play gym. You feel as if you run any faster you may bounce off the earth. The wind pushes you, harder and harder until you notice your legs are moving but you have left the earth. There is no panic, only freedom. Your legs don't stop moving as you climb higher and higher, with no fear you lunge upwards and feel the force of the winds behind you guide you towards the sun just a little more. The sun gets brighter and brighter until all you can see is light. The yellow glare quickly turns to a golden hue, then a blinding white light. You start to lose sensation in your toes. Then your legs. Your hands are next to go and by the time you realize you are losing your arms too, you can't feel anything below the waist. You have lost any real sense of position, and any real sense of where you are. Speckled glitters poke through this binding white light helping you gain some perspective and body awareness. These glittery specks flash more intensly as if you are traveling through time and space. Complete calm washes over you as this glitter has begun moving so fast beams are fighting through the light, surrounding what you believe to still be your body when in an instant it all ends. Everything goes black. You have this intense feeling of falling. Panic has set in again. You are falling. The earths colors begin to fade into your vision. Before you can grasp what is exactly happening there is a full, colorful but muted, earth far below you coming faster and faster into your view. There is a moment where you can visualize your very own death. But wait, can one die twice? As this thought finishes moving through your head all you can see is that lush green field come crashing into you. Silence. Darkness. Nothing. There is no light. No sound. No pain. No peace. There is only nothing.

(Published in the second edition of The Phish Companion...)

Do It Now!
On September 14, 1990, we were preparing to leave for Madison Square Garden the next morning for our first Dead show without Brent Mydland, who had died what seemed like a week after one of the better Dead shows I saw that year (Buffalo, NY). I was a little skeptical about Vince Welnick, after hearing lukewarm reviews of his first few shows. My friend and I, who had seen the majority of our Dead shows together, were at a party, and another friend had been telling us of this band Phish he had been seeing for the past year. At first we didn't want anything to do with them, especially after a couple of Max Creek shows that didn't do much for us at the time. In my eyes, there was only one "jamband."
The first Phish song I ever heard was “Fee”, off of Junta. Our friend sat us down in a room and played the Junta tape for us. My first impressions were "this is great, sorry I didn't believe you!" and "Shit, these guys can play, that guitar tone is exactly what I want to hear." We told our buddy we needed to borrow the tape for the ride down to MSG. I think we listened to it about twelve times over the course of three days in the car and the hotel. We were both hooked, and were looking forward to getting tickets to see Phish at the Somerville Theater a week later.
I still can't find a setlist for that first show I saw (September 21, 1990), but I remember how amazed I was at the whole band. Trey's guitar sound, mixed with him looking like a guy I played Dungeons and Dragons with in junior high; Fishman in the Zero-man outfit set up at the side of the stage; Page looking like my science teacher in high school; and Mike being…Mike.
After Somerville I saw a bunch of shows (it wasn’t until years later that I found out I saw “Destiny Unbound” at UNH) in ‘90 and ‘91. I slowed down a lot to only a few shows in ‘92 and ‘93, and then "returned" to Phish in 1994. As fate would have it, I picked a good night to return to the scene: 12/29/94, Providence Civic Center
This was my first Phish show in an arena. It is to this date one of the best shows I've seen the band play. Things kick off with “Runaway Jim”; a pretty rocking “Jim”, I might add. This version is definitely overlooked. It's only about eight minutes long or so, but segues nicely into “Foam”. “If I Could” was next and was basically “If I Could”. “Split Open and Melt” was a nice treat early in the set. A much faster jam than usual, with Fishman and Trey playing off each other at the beginning of the jam. Some chaos ensues about eight minutes in, and the whole thing is about eleven minutes long. Not the best “Split Open”, but a great piece of the show overall. “Horse->Silent”, “Uncle Pen”, and “I Didn't Know” follow. All pretty standard. “Possum” was next. Trey teases “Dueling Banjos” pre-vocals, and the rest is pretty rocking, as rocking as “Possum” gets.
The second set opens with what would be the last “Guyute” until Halloween ‘95. It sounds pretty flawless when I hear it now; there are also some subtle differences to the newer versions in the beginning. I can still remember being amazed by what is still one of my favorite Phish songs.
What happens next is what I look at as the opening of a whole new Phish I had never seen. This definitely marks the beginning of what I call my "Second Wave" of Phish. Sure, the intimacy of the small theater was gone, as well as the feeling of discovering a new band and having them to your self, so to speak, but if this show and future ones were an indication, why would I care how many people were there? Granted, this was my first arena Phish show, so that was also a bit of a big jump from my last show before this, at the Providence Performing Arts Center down the road (2/4/93 for those keeping track). So, another ten thousand people or so were now seeing Phish.
This was why, I guess.
What some people to this day still call a “Dave's Energy Guide” tease, I will still just call a “Delay Loop Jam”. Whatever you want to call it, it's wonderful music, and listening to it as I write this still gives me the shivers. This lasts for about three minutes, until Fishman begins what we know as the intro to “Bowie”. What happened next was basically thirty-seven minutes of Hose. Writing a simple "at 15:02 Trey starts playing arpeggios and whistling ‘Dixie’" would not even do this justice. For this thirty-seven minutes the band goes from some great spacey stuff at the beginning (including what I hear as an early incarnation of what we all know as the "Trey loop," which became pretty standard in jams starting in ‘97). Some great funky/spacey jamming, to the rocking Phish à la “DWD” (or “Drowned”), where it almost sounds like the “Bowie” is coming to a close. This is only halfway through the trip though. Eventually the band quiets down and Page takes the spotlight, playing some great melody lines. The band takes their cue from this and starts picking up the pace again, and then quiets down again. Some ambient stuff starts, and Trey and the band start whistling into the microphones with Trey whispering "Lassie…hey boy, there's a fire up on the old hill…good dog Lassie. Good boy…Lassie, come home." Some indecipherable whispering starts, and ends with "NOW! DO IT NOW! DO IT NOW!" This is repeated a few times and then Mike hits a pretty loud note that still makes me jump when I hear it now. A bit of feedback brings the music back to what we all know as the ending of “Bowie”.
The band could have left stage for the night and I would have been happy. Instead a short but fun “Halley's Comet” followed. This ended and went immediately to “Lizards”. To me, “Lizards”, even though it's never really jammed out, is like “Bathtub Gin”. It's one of those songs that when it starts you can feel the energy of the crowd and band as one. Fishman came out to the “Hold Your Head Up” music and stated, "I believe Neil Diamond sang this song. I believe he sang it at Madison Square Garden, too. He probably sang it everywhere. He sang it so much that. I am gonna sing it now, for you." The band broke into my first “Cracklin' Rosie”. Trey yelled "Henrietta!" at the end, and then started the set closer, “Good Times, Bad Times”. Trey teased “Heartbreaker” at one point.
They returned for the encore with acoustic instruments for “Long Journey Home”: Trey on acoustic guitar, Mike on banjo, Page on upright bass, and Fishman on mandolin. It was odd seeing an acoustic song in an arena, but it comes out on the tapes anyway. They went back to their respective instruments and ended the evening with “Sleeping Monkey”. This song is always great to end a show, or to bookend a great show with an amazing first half, or run of shows.
To me, this was the beginning of what would be many a show that blew me away with at least one large improvisational jam, or just all-around solid show. Not that I hadn’t seen some amazing shows four years earlier, but this is exactly what I was looking for. Band communication, band-audience communication, and collective improvisation at its finest. If you have not heard this Bowie at least, I advise you to go out and find a copy. Do it now.

This whole show was heat, don't let the bowie overshadow the rest of the show. I could write 3-5 paragraphs about this bowie alone, It is good enough to be the sole reason for buying or dowloading this show, but everything from this night is excellent. everything is really tight but nothing is bland or unimprovised. this is one of my top 5 shows out of the 400ish I own

DOWNLOAD IT NOW,NOW,NOW!!!

Pure raw energy. I feel fortunate to have caught this as one of my first. The vibe in the building was pure heat, going in direct contrast with the bitter cold outside Providence that night. Watching them create is always a treat but that night was like watching a goddess give birth.

It seems inevitable that everyone cites their bonafides at the outset of a Phish review- often in order to describe an order of magnitude or just to ego stroke. In any case I was lucky that a kid named Bertuzzi (his dad was a big NHL lawyer) introduced a bunch of us at one high school in Toronto to Phish. I missed their first appearance their, a tiny gig at the Spectrum in '92 but caught their next two at the Masonic Temple in '93 and '94. This is all by way of saying that apart from the excitement and unexpected and grizzly looking chicks selling cases of Marlboro's in the ticket line we didn't quite know what to make of it all but we wanted more.

So by the summer of '94 we judiciously picked two nights at Great Woods then the last night of summer tour in Fayston, Vt as our first 3 American summer shows. Great Woods (now Tweeter) proved to be the last full Gamehendge for a long time. And Sugarbush I have often said felt like one of the last of the 'old school' Phish shows. The band looked way haggard and the setlist was strong but the most 'out' stuff they did (besides a really dark and Twin Peaksy N20) was basically Page rocking out on the clavinet. You know clean playing, triumphant but not monstrously psychedelic.

Then by the fall by virtue of going to school out east we took a run down to Bangor for the night after Halloween (Nov. 2). That night of course gave us the Bangor Tweezer from A Live One and the feeling on that storming night inside this tiny metallic barn.... well I don't know quite how to describe the feeling. This was something new. This was something else. So much time seemed to pass during the Tweezer and so much range was covered in terms of sound that I didn't know if the set was going to be over after the second song.

Fortuitously we got tickets for the Holiday Run and really sketchily by bus, hitched rides etc made our way from Toronto to Philly to Providence to NYC. We were also still high school kids and the scene was blowing up so the whole combination of being in a foreign country and a huge subculture within it made for heady stuff. Philly I don't remember as really standing out apart from the exultant expectation of the next few days. That and the Little Drummer Boy tease which really clinched the colliding spirits of the season.

Then Providence happened. Nobody mentions the weather in any reviews I've read but it was blisteringly cold out and even if you heard the hiss of a tank somewhere you weren't going to find it. You were going straight from your car right into the venue. This was a big part of the trip I think because suddenly everyone's inside that got in and this was the first time anyone was seeing the crowd- inside the venue.

Another detail that's always left out is that Mike was playing what I'd later learn was a Chapman Stick for I believe the Delay Jam/ Dave's? The visual effect of seeing Mike take the stage with this freaky bodyless electric upright bass was exciting maybe even unnerving. Again it was just another thing we'd never seen, a different thing, and not one I'm sure I've seen since.

The first show at MSG was historical. But there was something in the Bangor Tweezer and the Providence Bowie that boded of something else, something new, something coming- and we wanted to be there when it arrived.

When I rate shows for Phish.net, I try to consider the rating as a cumulative grade of each song's performance during the show. A great jam does not necessarily mean a great show, if the band shows signs of struggling to stay together at other times. We now have the luxury of downloading individual performances of any show at any time; Why trudge through another "standard/great" first set just to get to another killer second set? Time is precious, and I want my review to help listeners and fans to save time (i.e. get to the good stuff).

Well, this show is the good stuff. The first set arguably slows down during the Horse>Silent-Uncle Pen (sloppy Trey)-IDK sequence, but *everything* else on the setlist is performed well for 1994 Phish (meaning excellent). When the band feels good, songs like Foam, Possum, or Good Times Bad Times will feature extra jamming or teases that reward listeners that seek them out.

The other reviewers have done a fine job reviewing the Bowie. All I will add is that, to my ears, this is the culmination of Phish's Fall '94 improvisation style. grinding rhythmic tension, spacy ambience, spontaneous melodic compositions, a touch of Phish-y, "get into your head and f*** with you" madness, and a rousing return to the climactic ending of the composition. You need to hear this show.

This was my first show after my mini tour up the east coast in October. I got shout out of Charlottesville and caught a ride up to my hometown with a fairly large crew. there were 11 of us in 2 sedans and it was like a 12 hour drive. It was pretty fucking crazy.

I took them all to my house where my mom lived. She was just happy to see me so she let them all sleep in the house. We all went up to Glens Falls and I got shut out which bummed me out so hard I dropped off tour. I had a ride all the way out west and nothing to do but I was just too sad.

I met a 16 year old kid there who everyone was calling Junior. He was like a total punk rocker not what you would think of as a Phish fan. He told me he got wasted at a Dead show in Cali fell asleep in a guys van. When he woke up however much later he was headed east to hook up with Phish tour. Last I saw him he was going to live with a metal band he met at a local bar. He was pretty wasted...

So I couldn't stay away and I made my reappearance in Providence. Great night to come home! I was with my friend Lee and I don't believe either of us had tickets. Last minute decisions are the best minute decisions...Providence had a pretty nice scene we met some cool folks that show. Lee and I got stuck in an elevator on the way into the show. We were bugging out but luckily got let out a few minutes later.

This show is phenomenal .I still think Fall 94 is up there with the great tours. Every show I attended or listened to pretty much is spot on. The Bowie was great with the Lassie whistles I was freaking out pretty good. The Jim/Foam combo was segued perfectly. When they open a show like that you know you are in for a special night. We had tickets for NYE so we were beyond excited for the next night. The boys were finally playing the big room...

Just wanted to say this is the show where I "got it."

I remember my friend Andy turn to me probably about a half hour in and just simply say, "They haven't finished David Bowie." I would return the favor during a specific Runaway Jim about 45 minutes up Rte. 146 you may have heard about, a few years later.

I had seen a handful of shows to this point, but somewhere in that Bowie I knew as long as this band plays, I'm going to try and seem them do so as much as I can.

Enjoy your day.

This was THE show.

I was in high school when Phish really started gaining steam. I first saw them in 1992 and last saw them in 1997. I grew up in New England (New Hampshire to be exact) and loved their music although I was not really in that "hippy" crowd and this was long before the "bro" culture surfaced. All of this is to say that while I don't have a problem with anyone liking their music I was pretty much just someone who enjoyed good musicianship and happened to catch some pretty amazing shows by Phish.

That being said I think this is an essential Phish show. I won't go into the full on details as I think many other reviewers have done a great job of cataloging this show. What I will say is this: Listen to this show in it's entirety. It's really Phish at their peak. I don't say that because I was there. It's just that from 1992-1997 the band was on this slow climb towards being a legitimately huge band who could hold festivals. Their musicianship and tightness in these years is unrivaled in my opinion.

I was lucky enough to be at the first Halloween show, I giggled when the comets crashed into Jupiter in Sugarbush, loved the fireworks at Old Orchard Beach and think New Years 1992-1994 were superb. This show ranks up there with all of those. . .it's superb.

At the time of this review this show has the highest rating here on Phish.net. I think that is crazy talk, but this show is still spectacular. This is a show whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The centerpiece, and only truly notable part of the show, is the Bowie, which has to be heard to be believed. The only other part I feel compelled to comment on is the actual segue between Jim and Foam, which is cool. Other than those two things, this is a well played show from '94 that just works. I don't know why, it just does.

5/5, a must have.

This isn't really a review, as I don't have anything to add which hasn't been touched upon in other reviews. Rather, this is just a comment about one of the other reviews.

One review attached to this show talks about a show in Spartanburg from Fall '94. It was bothering me that this review was attached to the wrong show, so I decided to figure out which show was actually being reviewed. It turns out this was actually a review of the show from 10/29/94.

I try not to be too pedantic, but I couldn't help myself with this one.

Love the way this show starts out: classic, strong Runaway Jim opener with some nice type I improv and a super smooth segue into a heyday era Foam. Very lovely version of If I Could then juxtaposes with a pretty odd Split Open and Melt, which parallels some of the 2022 Melts' "non-musical" tendencies of chaos on Trey's guitar. Horse->Silent is standard, but well placed after Melt. Pen and IDK are what they are, but the set closes out on another big high note with a nice riffy-intro Possum. The jam charts put it well to compare the third quarter of the jam section to a '94 Tweezer/Bowie as we get some pretty dissonant deviation from the typical blues harmony in some moments. I believe this sort of play on Possum became a bit more common in '95 and beyond (see Niagara Falls).

After a Guyute warm up, we get to the star of the show: Providence Bowie. I'm often hesitant to write about the mega jams like this one for fear that I'll miss something or fail to serve proper justice to such a highwater mark in the band's improvisational history. As such, I'll leave at this: this jam's got it all...okay one more comment: I love the Eye-of-the-Tiger-esque ascending melody Trey works into the peak. Probably my favorite version of my favorite Phish song (though other '94/'95 versions do manage to hold a flame). From here, there's not too too much noteworthy: Halley's is straightforward and there's a nice Lizards. Could honestly do without the HYHU session in this set considering we already heard IDK, but it is what it is. GTBT is fun with the extra LZ teases, and I like the Long Journey Home encore choice.

This show along with 7/25/92 & 12/31/92 was one of the first shows I ever heard. A friend of mine had a really good recording of it. I love this 1st set ! It was my first time hearing I Didn't Know, Halley's Comet & The Lizards. Back in the day when you had to wait a while to accumulate a collection. I felt privileged to hear the infamous "Unreleased" material. These 3.0 fans will never know. Subtle old man rant...over.
PHISH_PLAY_MEMPHIS_AGAIN.

(Published in the second edition of The Phish Companion...)

I first listened to Phish in the Fall of 1994. It was my sophomore year of college, and I was living next door to this fantastic girl who was really into them. I really wanted to impress her, so I started buying their studio albums and listening to them constantly.
It turns out that this band was coming to Spartanburg, about an hour away, in late October. I knew she was going to be there, so I was determined to get tickets. My roommate wound up scoring us great seats, and we were all set to go. I even borrowed a few live tapes from a friend from high school who lived upstairs. My first live Phish was the New Year’s 1993 show, and I listened to that tape over and over again to try and prepare me for what was coming.
When listening to the tapes of Spartanburg, I can truly appreciate what a great show this was. I don't remember much about the first few songs, except that I liked “Runaway Jim” and that the melody to “Simple” was really catchy. I vividly remember getting excited to hear “Split Open”, which was a song that I knew, but getting confused as hell as the band ran through two other numbers before winding up in “Rift”. Little did I know that the two songs were the rare “Buffalo Bill” and the (at the time) semi-rare “Makisupa Policeman”. The way that the band moved through the songs with ease, seamlessly flowing from number to number without regard to succumbing to the various rhythm and tempo changes left me awestruck.
During setbreak, I took the chance to look around and gather my surroundings. The Spartanburg Memorial Auditorium is a pretty small theater and, along with the Fox in Atlanta, is one of the two smallest places that I have seen Phish. Everyone seemed to know each other; hugs and smiles and kind, warm feelings were passed around and shared continuously. I was on the left aisle, center section, and the guy across the aisle had been keeping a setlist. He filled me in on what I didn’t know, and I couldn’t believe that they had dared to play so many non-album songs! We were only about ten rows in front of the tapers’ section; I knew such a thing existed, but I couldn’t believe that so many people were so passionate about chronicling the music and that the band was so open and encouraging of it. This band seemed to break all of the rules of a traditional concert! Nothing, though, prepared me for the second set.
It opened up with “Down with Disease”, which I was incredibly excited to hear. Hoist was the first Phish album I ever heard, and “Disease” is one of the two songs that firmly inserted the hook into my mouth. It flowed beautifully into what I thought was just an absolutely beautiful jam. I later learned it was the theme from “The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday”. After “Avenu” and the “TMWSIY” reprise, I began to hear some familiar guitar licks. As a classic-rock fan and longtime Who devotee, I jumped ecstatically when I recognized “Sparks”. Later on, the “YEM” was nice, as was the opening to “Antelope”. I couldn’t believe it when they stopped and changed into some song about sending a monkey home on the train. I laughed uncontrollably as Fishman belted that final chorus, much like I had when he danced around with the vacuum during “Bike”. And I again lost my marbles when they tagged “Let It Be” onto the ending of that monkey song. And then they finished the “Antelope”! So what did we get for an encore? “Harry Hood”. Sure, I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but what a treat!
Over the last few years, I have enjoyed this show on so many levels. First, I dug it because of the humor the band wove into the music, as well as the band’s obvious musical talent. Then, as I became a bigger fan, I started to appreciate the jams and the fun segues. Later, I realized what a strange setlist it truly was and how lucky I was to see a song in my first show that I will probably never see again. (“Buffalo Bill”…yes, I missed the Great Went!)
When I put it all together, it’s easy to realize what a great and underrated show it is. Things never worked out between the girl and I, as awesome of a person as she is. But I sure as hell don’t regret spending the money on the ticket! I’ve seen quite a few shows since and heard over six hundred tapes, but this show, my first, still ranks as one of my favorites.