It's funny.
If I'm honest with myself I will recall how after I saw 11/21/97, I was like "what the fuck was that shit?" And not in a good way. It was, as described above, just so entirely different from the Phish I'd heard before. As my friend is fond of saying, we all forget that at the time, people were like "what the fuck? They just drop into the same groove during every song. And they play My Soul every fucking show." True.
It took the rest of us a little longer to figure out what they already had: that they were focusing all their talents down to one single laser beam of energy, like a record needle, and the cosmos was the record, and they were letting fly with whatever came out. The concentration and trust it must have taken to completely abandon their sound and trust that people would follow along...the only comparison I can think of is the Beatles.
Once every single .netter out there has personally PM'd me to say they've listened to the Limb By Limb from 12/11/97, I'll let it go. Until then, Happy 21st Birthday Best 10 Minutes of Phish Music Ever.