The thing is that Phish is a product of their environment. For the most part, Phish changes their setlist based on what they're feeling at the show. Bonnaroo has for a long time been known as a place where people come to discover music. You come down to a couple bands you really love and leave raving about five bands you hadn't heard of before that weekend. Any real fan of Bonnaroo was COMPLETELY drained by Sunday night and I personally liked the restraint shown by the band throughout the entire show.

There kept being little blips where I'd notice Trey or Mike pull some kind of funky riff and then settle back down into the groove. I think each one of those little flare-ups were little nods to the real die-hard fans in the audience who were really listening closely.

The majority of Phish fans that remained for Sunday night were plenty drained, but still excited and I think that kind of reverberated through the band's set. The people that were seeing Phish for the first time had their minds blown by this show anyway, despite its lack of gems for Phish junkies to hang their hat on. And true new-comers to the band wouldn't have been able to fully appreciate what they were seeing if they got an obscure song or some kind of crazy drawn out jam. Would it have made made the experience better if they had to later listen to and understand what they were hearing during that show? Maybe. Probably. But when you're playing on a stage like Bonnaroo's Main stage, you almost have an obligation to cater to the crowd. I'm pretty damn sure there were plenty of Phish virgins at that show and when you're catering to them it works well to play a bunch of recognizable, solidly played classics. By doing this, you don't really alienate anyone, you appease most major Phish fans - at least until their next show, and you expose a giant audience of people to an awesome band that they can later really dive into and explore.

My first Phish show was Roo '09 and both of those shows had the same kind of restraint we saw at this year's Roo, but it was enough to hook me and now I'm a die hard.
I felt what most of you are talking about during the show. Nothing too special, and I'm still looking for my Maze, but a widely appealing set that sent everyone home happy. I'm not sure I could have been able to handle a full-scale Phish epic 4 hour performance after 3+ days of partying that hard, and I think that's something that the band realized. So, they just let us groove a little, played some cool songs, jammed here and there, and capped off an unbelievable festival experience for a lot of people.

Good or bad, I though their show seemed appropriate for the audience and time. I left wanting more, but maybe that's what the band was trying to do. Because now I know at least that I'm locked into that Deer Creek > Alpine run.