@n00b100 said:

I'll grant the points by @TheEmu and @smoothatonalsnd about Rebas that could have made any of the tiers. Like I said, I love Reba.

@RoundTheRoom said:

I have no problem with the fans voting in the Tahoe Tweezer as #1, because the fan voting is incredibly biased in the Twitter age (it's so easy for casual fans to have heard the Tahoe Tweezer and not, say, the Orlando Stash, etc.).

That said, wow the Tahoe Tweezer is overrated here. Would not make my top 26 jams. I do think it's great, but Phish has '93-'00 of heavy touring in their prime to contend with. I could find 26 better jams in '94-'98, without too much trouble. Ymmv.

You could find 26 jams you like more, you mean. It's an important distinction!

How many casual fans are on this message board, I wonder? If you're actually seeking out a message board for a band like Phish, I argue that it's actually very hard to be a casual fan. You have to be a *committed* fan. You *have* to have heard more than just 3.0 (otherwise you'll never hear the end of it), and are most likely familiar with the great shows and jams. This ain't 1995 - you won't have to search far and wide to hear the Orlando Stash. Like I said, I actually believe it's more the opposite effect - plenty of people have heard the Orlando Stash or Denver Ghost and so on, but if you're talking 3.0, you've ONLY heard the Tahoe Tweezer. It's its own reference point. You're not talking about 26 jams you like more than the 6/3/11 Disease or 8/31/12 CDT or 7/13/14 CDT, right?

But, again, let's say that you're right and this board is flooded with folks that have heard the Tahoe Tweezer but haven't heard, say, the 12/9/95 YEM. Let me ask you this:

1. Why the heck would they be voting in this little exercise, then?
2. Doesn't that *still* say more about how 3.0 is regarded than anything else?

@squail said:

I don't think it's overrated. Or at least, you can't make that claim from this data. We submitted 10 entries, but we didn't rank them. I put the Tahoe Tweezer on my list and I bet a lot of others did too because I wanted a ballot that included songs from every era. This Tweezer was my only 2009-2014 selection. I bet that's true for other voterss. So what you get is a worthy HOF song that likely had small competition from the era-standpoint, so it ends up on a high percentage of ballots, and is, imo, misinterpreted as being overrated. If the list had been ordinal, Tahoe Tweezer would have been on the bottom of my list.

Which, again, says more about how 3.0 is considered than anything else. Look - they've played a good deal less shows from 2009-14 than in any other 6 year stretch between 1993-2000, and I don't think it can be argued that the quality from the latter six-year stretch would be higher. But what that *doesn't* mean is that they didn't play music from 2009-14 that's right there with the old days, and that said music is just concentrated to one 36-minute jam played in a casino parking lot. I voted for two 3.0 jams on my ballot, and definitely would have voted for more if the ballot had been larger.

I have no doubt that @squail is right about the Tahoe Tweezer being the only 3.0 jam on plenty of ballots. I just think that kinda sucks.

OK, 26 jams I like more. I don't see much of a difference between that and "that are better" (obviously, IMO, since I am the author of the post...), but I'll appease and say that nothing is "better" than anything else, it's all just subjective preference. YEM isn't a better song than Sugar Shack, I just like it more.

I'm not sure I follow you about the opposite effect holding. Do you mean that Phish fans who don't listen to 3.0 have heard the Tahoe Tweezer, but not the DTE Disease? I do agree that it's a "reference point"; its effects rippled through not only the Phish/jamband community, but beyond it, in some cases. The woos and track time certainly didn't hurt that effect. It's popular; so are the Kardashians. People generally "get things right", when sample sizes are large - this Tweezer is damn good, it has plenty of value. I just don't think it's properly rated in this poll.

To answer your questions:

1. I can tell you from my own personal experience, that from 2009-2012, I was really interested in 3.0 Phish (I saw 20 3.0 shows, took a break from listening during the break-up, and then got back into them when they came back). I wanted to hear every notable jam from 3.0 that I didn't know - because that's the version of Phish that I was going to see a couple months later! Not the 1994, "unattainable" version. Then I started to realize how "little" (my mom would laugh; she would intercept the thousands of bubble mailers in '02-'04 before I could get to them) I knew about the 1.0 classics. I changed my focus, and got schooled. I think I'm not the only fan who enjoyed "living in the moment" at the expense of educating myself on the band's history. It's easy to say from the position of a MASSIVE Phish fan that everyone has heard the Classic Phish Jam X, but it takes time to get through the catalog. While I bet 95%+ of those who have posted in the last 100 days on phish.net has heard the Tahoe Tweezer, I'd venture to say that the percentages for the other tunes (if everyone were honest) would be significantly lower. I could be wrong.
2. I actually can't answer this one, because I'm not quite sure what you're asking. Will check back later for a reply, I'm curious.

Thanks for engaging.
RTR