Absolute agreement to most Phish and Dead shows not living up to the Warfield 99 run.

I have zero vested interest in Phil and Friends or the Dead after 1978 or so.. So maybe im missing some shows that are better..

But it's hard to make a case for more than a small handful of 3 consecutive shows by Phish or the (60s-70s anyway) Dead having the sheer volume of A+ improvisation those P&F shows have.

And all the circumstances surround it push their greatness into mind boggling territory. Phil's and Kimock's first full show with Trey or Page, Trey's first full show with another lead guitar player in over a decade (I'm sure there's an ARU show or something somewhere but humor me), Trey and Page's first time playing the vast majority of these songs for public consumption, in front of a crowd that was at the very least heavily sprinkled with Dead fans suspicious of Phish, and swimming in people whose opinion of Phish would be somewhere between "who?" Or "I don't care" and "they suck" or "they're ruining Jerry's legacy". On top of all that Phish was just starting to enter the period where the cracks started to show. Summer 99 has shows just as messy as August 2004.

And somehow all this is rendered moot by a third of the way through Viola Lee when the hose started gushing and didn't let up until the end of the 3rd night