Along with the Deer Creek show, this date marks Phish's return to loose-limbed improvisatory form - really a restoration of nerve and patience. The first set is every bit as good as its lovely songlist, but things finally get wooly in Set II: the Talking Heads tune erupts into gorgeous ambient noise, Disease passes through delicate space to a goblins-marching interlude to the homebase of Bug, and Piper gets futuristically knotty before Page and Trey start an emphatically lovely Wading in the Velvet Sea. After a ho-hum Boogie On, the band cries to heaven with a tremendous Slave to the Traffic Light. The Star Lake show offered hope that the end of tour would feature a return to open-ended jamming, and while the boys didn't loosen up 100%, the difference between the constrained jamming of early June and the bold gestures of the final three shows is night and day.

If you're only going for one Alpine Valley show, I'd suggest this one. But why choose? This is why Al Gore invented external hard drives, right?