Regarding Tahoe Tweezer being voted highly and (heaven forbid!!) tops...

I did not vote because I have not been paying close attention to the site recently, but I just read every damn post on here. A good natured lot, which is appreciated.

Anyway, it is an exercise in pretzel-logic to penalize this glorious jam because it's long, ie; citing it's length as a sort of mindless hole that people punch...a rite of passage that allows entrance into the discussion. Defenders of the jam's status among the elite (I am one) are quick to point out the sheer brilliance and organic nature of the movements, which were astounding on their own merits, regardless of the length of the piece, though one cannot discount its length in it's consideration for HOF status.

I'm not going to pretend that I've heard every piece of music cited in this discussion, because I have not, but certainly have heard a good deal of it, and this Tahoe gem ranks favorably with all of them, using any accepted Phish criteria you can come up with.

I would like to point out, however, that there are other, more germane reasons why it strikes such a chord with so many of us. I consider this jam, whether justified or not, as the defining point when "3.0" ceased being "well, for 3.0", and came into it's own league as what had come before. We knew the boys were back before this (Dicks, BG3, etc), but in dancing and wooing on that littered parking lot, magic happened between band and audience which transcends the recording, and it screams at you when you listen to it. Say what you will about all "wooing" since, this night it was an organic and visceral experience.

The jam meant as much to me for the context in which it occured as it did for the music itself.

I personally think that 8/29/14 Simple is its equal in terms of jamming, but contextually it does not stand as tall, in the same way that K2 does not dominate the skyline the way Kilimanjaro does.

So, allow it to receive the love it's getting without denigrating its status. It means a lot to people for lots of reasons.