@HeadyGroundScore said:

While I appreciate the well written and well thought out review of the show, I think OP is missing the point. Festival Phish (especially not their own) is not the same as tour Phish and not even close to Real [Festival] Phish. I had zero, count them, ZERO expectations that this show would be anything more than it was. In fact, I was a bit surprised at how much they actually did "jam." Bonaroo Phish does not placate to the real phans, but rather to the 70,000 other people at the show.

Why?

Why does Phish owe it to anyone to dumb down their presentation. This baffles me. In my opinion, Phish is the best band in the world and to think that they would say "hey, so a lot of people in the audience probably don't like Phish, so we better give them the most basic version of what we do." That's ludicrous. Does Radiohead dumb down their show for a festival? Did Battles? Did Flaming Lips? (and don't even come back with a response that they're not comparable) Phish is a HEADLINER. Saying that a majority of the audience isn't there to see them is once again implausible. Last band on stage after a long weekend, in the fucking rain, anyone who didn't want to see Phish was long fucking gone.

And I'm not even talking about the quality of the music they played here. I'm talking about this idea of a "festival set." To say you had no expectations is incorrect, you had (at least what I can take from your comment) the expectation that they would play below their potential. It's just that you were ok with that. Bonnaroo was another show, actually, it wasn't really any different than what will be played in AC. But everyone's expectation seems to be significantly lower than the norm solely because of the environment. Some people are willing to accept that and some aren't. I am still hung up on the concept itself.