@mud_lovebuddy said:

Enjoyed reading.

I am of the opinion that the Ghost > Theme -> Cities is very good but the rest of the set is nothing to write home about. You seem to be of the same opinion.

I, however, can't make the mental leap to say 40 very good minutes makes it the "best" set of 3.0, let alone the top 10. I can understand how it might be your "favorite."

Agree to disagree on that one.

And that, of course, is why I said "favorite" and not "best", because how exactly do you quantify "best"? If you just mean "straight jams all the way through", that'd probably put 7/13/14 II at the top, although you've still got Monica/Wading/Slave to deal with at the end. If you mean "wacky hijinks", then it's gotta be 7/27/14 II, but that might be considered a tad improv-light (though, as noted above, less so than people think). If you want a combination of the two, that probably leads you to 10/20/13 II (and shit, I wouldn't second-guess you if you did - it was my #1 for a good while!). But just the fact that I brought up three different ways to consider what the "best" Phish set is (and there are almost certainly many more) shows that searching for "best" - a term of objectivity - in something as astoundingly subjective as music is a fool's errand.