1. If people are gonna be pushing hard for The Clifford Ball because all the songs were very crisply played, then I'd say we should be seeing a lot more love for Summer 2015 first sets on here.

2. My stance on Coventry has been posted any number of times, so I might as well post it here - I have little problem at all listening to a "mediocre" show (of course that's true, I'm a 3.0 fan, ba dum tish), but I have no desire whatsoever to listen to a show that makes me sad. I mean, I know it turns out all right in the end, but that doesn't make the blown changes or the ugly moments or Trey weeping on stage while so full of opiates they were leaking out of his ears any more interesting to me. Like, that's great that there's so many good jams or whatever, but...every other festival on here has a lot of great jams, and none of the other ones involve the band going through (tm @waxbanks) an acrimonious on-stage divorce, so...?

3. I could probably live the rest of my life without reading yet another article/stream of comments that deify Cypress and say it's an "incomparable" show or some shit. You can compare it very, very easily to the rest of December '99, because it sounds a *lot* like the rest of December '99 (which, if you like December '99, is wonderful, but I feel like there's more people than not that love Cypress and don't really have much to say about the rest of the month). I like December '99, for sure, and I like Cypress for sure, but Lord knows I like Fall '99 better, let alone plenty of other tours. I always feel like the main argument to crown Cypress' ass is "they played seven 1/2 hours of jams", to which I say, well, 1) they didn't *really*, and 2) give me 10 minutes and I'll make you a seven-hour mixtape that *fucking wrecks* Cypress on tape. That's how I've always seen Cypress - an incredible mixtape. As a *show*, there are any number of others that beat it for quality jams, diversity of the music, and setlist flow. In my opinion.

Of course, I say all this based on the recordings; if you were there and think it's their greatest show, I'd never attempt to convince you otherwise.

4. I'm not going to go out here and say Festival 8 is anywhere near Magnaball's level or anything, but I think the entry above sells it short. 11/1/09 III, for instance, is a very nice set, "even" for 2009.

5. I have a feeling I'll end up liking Magnaball more than IT as time passes, mainly because Magnaball's great jams never feel like they're just up there jamming for the sake of jamming (which, for all I love 03-04, is a constant 03-04 issue for me), whereas IT's big jams (especially on Day 2) often have a bit more fat in them than I'd like. That 39 minute 46 Days, for instance, is (to me) more length than girth; the already-legendary 8/22/15 Prince Caspian is 23 minutes shorter but feels so much weightier and more packed with quality music.

6. I cannot say enough about the Great Went. You could very, very easily argue that those are the two best back-to-back shows the band has ever played. You could argue that either show is the best one they've ever played. Shit, you could argue 8/17/97 II is the greatest Phish set of all time. I'd make an argument for that before I made one for Cypress, I know that much.

7. Oswego is weird - not least because they just went right back into the tour after it was over. It's the festival that feels least like a festival. And it's got plenty of good music, but it's got no real je nais se quoi, certainly not the way any of the other festivals do - no famous soundcheck, no secret set, no costume, no long set, no era-defining set, no nothing. I've never thought either show is any sort of "best of Summer '99" contender, great jams or no great jams. Shrug.

8. Count me in among those that don't know how/why you'd talk about the festivals without the secret sets - or the soundchecks, for that matter. I adore Magnaball and IT, but it's hard to imagine either festival without their soundchecks and their secret sets.