". fans want to hear the old shit,"

I've been into this band for (What some would consider a 'short') 15 years and I go into every show wanting to hear Undermind, Round Room, Waves, Steam, Halfway To The Moon and A Song I heard The Ocean Sing.

This band might not be playing sets in a way that satisfies your expectations for how a Phish show should correctly flow, or improvising as much as you (or I) want them to, but there is a palpable passion to their playing and a joy that I didn't witness with the band from when I started seeing them in 1997 through the 2.0 era.

Right now they seem to be in a very 1992-esque state of mind, but with a more mature sense of jamming. IMO the improvisation has been spectacular recently, going back through last summer. There might not be enough of it for most of our liking but the glimpses they are showing us makes me feel like the old ESP is just as strong as it ever was and that this is simply a stylistic choice that they're making. 3 minutes of funk in the Atlantic City Tube lead to more joy than the absolutely spectacular version from Hershey Park in 2000 that shattered any expectations the song could have ever carried and then some.

However as to this comment 'While I can marvel at an hour long Runaway Jim, in the end, it usually only stands out because it is an hour long.'

I disagree. It's a stunning mission statement from Fall 1997 Phish where the name of the game was cohesion. They switch from movement to movement with such ease and conviction that it still stands out as one of the best things they've ever played to me. It's a shame that it got such backlash from people who just thought people were flogging it's length when plenty of people were utterly in awe of what they accomplished within that Jim.

And for what it's worth that Worcester Ghost is more "Type II' than a lot of stuff that people throw around when talking "Type II". It seems like some people just think that any spacey jam automatically means that Phish is playing without a net. There are just as many similarities amongst the vast majority of ambient/spacey jams as there are amongst the vast majority of rock/funk/etc jams. While it's true that Phish doesn't really have any songs that are *designed* to go directly into ambient jamming, i don't think a lot of people would consider Stash going into a funk jam to be considered "Type II" even though it would clearly be outside the framework of the song and the jam style that the song has mostly maintained throughout the years. The last version of Stash was very atypical IMO.

Lately it seems like the changes are subtle and if you told the band that they aren't taking risks they'd look at you boggle-eyed. Their improvisation is a force to be reckoned with right now, and I can't blame anyone's annoyance with the band if their complaint boils down to "I wish they were doing this amazing improvisational stuff more often"- the people who think the jams suck now are just plain offbase. And this is coming from someone who just called the 97 Jim the best thing he's ever heard and who jocks Random 2.0 jams that put 80% of Phish fans into a bad mood before putting them to sleep. I'm an improv junkie, and Phish- cockteases that they are, are as good at it right now as they've ever been. It's like their mixing the quick-change style of the early 90s with the groove based style of the late 90s/early 00s and making these subtly mutating masterpieces every time they step outside of the box- and that's happening a lot more than people want to credit. They're doing more in 2 minutes than they were doing in 10 minutes 10 or 15 years ago.