Yea I realize that I jumped into this at a point that was perhaps not conducive to the discussion I was looking for. There's probably some other way to post a thread than jumping into the middle of the show review, sorry about that. I had been ruminating on some of these thoughts for a while and I came home a little buzzed and was just thinking about how sharp the music has been lately and about how much their collective musicianship has advanced over the years and thinking that, at least to me, that their sound is much more cohesive and even raw at times than I've felt like they were during my earlier experiences. I feel like the crispness of the playing (with some exceptions of course - and who doesn't have off nights), the explosiveness of each of their sounds, the way that can just quickly diverge into something even within the transitions between verses of a song and just all collectively be on the same page with some warped backbeat rhythm or some quirky little trill that they start teasing. Particularly I have been stunned by just about everything that Mike and Page have been doing over the course of the last year (and particularly how the lines from Mike seem to dance through so many different playful themes while still maintaining a rock solid anchor).

In a private message someone helped me re-evaluate something else that I said in that post where I suggested that they are a tighter band. That doesn't really say what I was trying to get at at all. I was commenting on the the virtuosity of their playing when I used the word tight speaking to the fact that their collective mastery of their individual instruments (and I also think the way that they blend them together) has improved. But aside from this sharpness of skill its actually much more true to say that they are in many ways looser now and seem to be having a great deal of fun in varrying their approach to songs, changing rhythms, playing more off the beat, altering harmonies, and just being very playful in a dexterous manner which is something as a musician and as a listener that pleases me and fascinates me because I know how hard it is to be in a space to be able to pull it off.

I guess I feel like the total product has improved and I feel like a lot of the jams I've heard lately don't have the meandering, sometimes noodling quality that would sometimes pop up during some extended jams I've experienced in the past (not that that was always the case, I'm not trying to over generalize here).

Some of this is definitely a product of maturation, perhaps trading some attention to exploration for a feeling of direction as if some areas have already been perhaps a little bit more well-traversed and thus they have a better sense of where they want to go with it (and here to I don't want to over generalize as I feel like I have heard a great deal of explorative jamming from them of late that I think is really bold and fresh Rock and Roll from the Gorge and Light from Tahoe come immediately to mind, and on a related note and though it was not necessarily novel in its structure the intensity of the jam on Julius @ Outside Lands was beyond anything I've ever felt on that song and it continued on from their into Backwards down the number line with these sharp energetic licks that were shattering and uplifting all it once - felt like my head was exploding with light)!!!

It seems to me too that they are really just starting to lock in insofar as this new incarnation is concerned and I attribute much of their willingness to repeat songs more often as well as to varry their approach to a song (loosening or tightenting up) from time to time to be indicative of both their desire to really lock in on both on a given song and also just to stay synched in together thus making sure they play the songs they feel best about. As well as to give the people in various locales some of what they think that they really want to hear because they are perhaps playing less frequently. (It was my good friend's birthday @ Outside Lands) we were there with friends who had been to Tahoe, I had watched the webcasts, our friend really wanted to hear six songs that had been played in the last week due to him not having seen Phish since 1999 and they played all of them and while this was frustrating to some degree for some folks who had seen them more recently they just killed those songs and we loved it).

Anyway, I've got to make dinner. I didn't intend to be confrontational and I'm sorry if I came across that way. Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to extended jams from this particular incarnation of my favorite band. Given what I said above about the sharpness of their playing I have no reason to expect that that would be a bad thing. I do feel like a great deal of what I have heard over the last year in particular has been significantly sharper on a collective level than much of what I was hearing in the nineties and I have definitely been doing a fair amount of listening and making comparisons. There was definitely much more exploration going on during the nineties but I don't know that the music was "better". Jams are great but I really love the songs themselves and their various arrangements and the weird harmonies and parts that they have and I feel like that is all significantly more cohesive, lively, and above all sharp and big in its sound quality. That said, Iwon't be complaining if they decide to take another fifty minute tour through Runaway Jim or Tweezer - I would actually really like to hear them stretch out Steam as I feel like that has all sorts of potential for new directions and sounds - or anything else for that matter, I remember a particularly interesting and long Jam on Fee from the Winter Run in 99, I digress....

Anyway, I meant no disrespect so sorry to get off on the wrong foot.

Be Well

Sparrow