I'm getting thumbed down again (always fun to see that happen), so I'm going to bow out of the whole 3.0 discussion. Contrary to what it may appear, I don't like making the same points about any of this, nor do I have any sort of bias against 1.0.

@Icculus asked for comments that draw attention to why jams mean so much to us, so I'll use this post to just talk about why I think the 5/22/00 Ghost should be in the top tier:

1. Mike Gordon, whose work in underpinning these great jams can often go more neglected than it should, had his finest moment as a member of this band in this jam. Listen to his work when Trey plays That One Lick after the 20 minute mark - his playing is just so fluid, gorgeous, and *overwhelming* that I can't take my ears (so to speak) off of it. It brings such joy to my heart.

2. The late-90s jams, in comparison to the spikiness of the mid-90s jams, tend to roam across the same wide swaths of improvisational lands, but in a much smoother way than the older ones do (3.0 follows the same tack; small wonder I'm as drawn to 2000s Phish as I am to 97-00 Phish), and this is probably the smoothest jam they ever played. I think that's why people can find it boring or soporific - it's SO smooth, so precise in its transitions and how it shifts shapes, that it gives the effect of being effortless when in actuality it is anything but. The 2.0 jams aimed for the same effect, with varying amounts of success, but none of them reached the same level this jam did.

3. Plenty of jams find different moods, but to my ears, none of them find their particular mood as well as the 5/22/00 Ghost finds its mood - serenity. They have never played a jam so full of serene, blissful confidence as the 5/22/00 Ghost, and they probably never will (the 10/28/14 Twist, to my ears, comes closest). It's not just the best of its kind - it might very well be the *only* of its kind. It's a monolithic jam, and (to my ears) their finest moment.