@BrotherEarth said:

It seems rude to smack down today's show because it doesn't connect they way yesterdays (yesteryears?) show did.

BUT THAT ISN'T WHAT ANYONE IS DOING. There's an enormous difference between putting a show in an historical context and just taking a dump on it.

EVERYONE who is even the least bit involved in Phish.net as a user, whether they post in or visit the Forum now and then, read the blog now and then, or write in the blog now and then, is THRILLED that Phish is back at it again and playing for us at all again! This site exists for passionate Phish fans! If we have any users who couldn't care less about Phish, it's a mystery what they're doing here.

Reviewing shows isn't about "smacking down" anything. It's about thoughtfully (one hopes) putting them in perspective based on what the reviewer has heard in Phish history given his or her Phish experience. Not just 3.0 Phish history, but Phish history, period.

As for your comment that you think "it is relevant if the crowd is responding in an unusually excited, or subdued, manner," well, sure it's "relevant", but guess what? The crowd almost always responds in an "excited" manner to what Phish performs. There are exceptions, of course, now and then, e.g., about ten minutes in to "Time Turns Elastic," or at any given point during the never-ending FLeezer jam segment (the Finger Lakes Tweezer -- have you heard it?). And you can also get a very good sense of crowd reactions to the music from recordings, of course. But judging the MUSIC based on audience reaction ultimately doesn't make sense. The 10/30/10 AC Zeppelin madness was incredible to behold live (I was fortunately there), and the crowd went nuts for it as did I, but musically? It's largely a mess. My hunch is that people tend to read reviews of Phish shows to read what the reviewer thought about the music of the show, and not whether everyone went crazy at the first notes of "Sample in a Jar."