[We would like to thank Jen Chadbourne (@Saw_ita_Jen) for recapping last night’s show. She currently lives in Burlington, Vermont, working at Nectar’s (hopefully) and freelancing event and production work. She is a longtime fan of Phish’s music; she tries to catch a few shows every year and has been seeing them for three decades so it adds up. Jen also promotes programming and organic networking wherever she is, she is building and connecting ‘community.’ -Ed.]

With Koa 1.5 + the OG 1.0 stage arrangement, are we conjuring ‘96 or what? I'm going to own my bias of 1996 in Phish openly here, I saw my 100th show that Fall at the Arco Arena show in Sacramento, CA. I was lucky enough to catch almost the whole fall tour stateside. So back to ‘96. Trey dropped the plug on his Insta story about the new Koa 1.5 guitar made out of the same wood from the same tree as his coveted Koa 1 aka '96 (with a recent wiring modification similar to Mar-Mar), so that planted the seed in my mind about the ‘96 era being on the front of the bands mind. Then earlier this afternoon Phish posted sound check photos showing that they have a ‘new’ stage set-up that is actually the “old stage” stage setup, more conjuring of ‘96 and really the whole pre-96 era of 1.0. Musically to me ‘96 stands out as it was the crystallization of the peak of raw Phish. ‘97 and ‘98 led to the funk fusion of their perfected sound. One thing to consider about ‘96 is the whole band used very few effects, sound modulation, loopers, pedals etc. The articulation of their abilities was jaw dropping, They just nailed it all without any need to have effects. ‘96 was the crystallization of the craft, the rest of 1.0 was the on to perfection and release.

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