(posted 12 years ago at rec.music.phish)

Wednesday November 25
The Knick - Albany, NY

I:
PYITE
My Soul
Roggae
AC/DC Bag
Lifeboy
Bowie
Glisten
Dryvah
Good Times, Bad Times

II:
Also Sprach
Golgi (didn't they do that in Pittsburgh '97?)
Drowned->
Crapstain !
Piper
Yem
Been Caught Stealin'
Llama

E:
Something
Guyute
Freebird

Something was definately wrong at the Knickerbocker Arena last Wednesday -
very wrong. It was obvious to me from little flubs and dropped cues by
each band member, Trey in particular, during the first set that something
was up that was keeping the guys from getting into the flow of things.
The Bowie was plodded through in a cautiously timid manner, but what
sealed it for me was the fact that they played Glisten (Or SLEEP if that's
what it really is) BEFORE Driver. What in the world were they thinking?!
To me, it seemed that the acoustic tunes were used tonight as a way for
Trey to get back to his senses, and to help bring everyone back into
focus. The Good Times then ripped, as if he'd decided during the closing
notes of Driver, "Shit, man, I'm at the Knick. I can't not kick ass
tonight." GTBT was appropriate for me to hear tonight...it was the 4th
anniversary of my first show [11/25/94 UIC] where it was also payed.
(Side note - tonight was also my 60th! Be carefull boys & girls,
otherwise one day you'll look back at 4 years and 60 Phish shows and say
"Oh my god..." too.)

Second set then featured a band that was tighter, more psyched, and more
rockin' than ever. The Also Sprach was great - a solid 15 minutes that
launched into Golgi. And, yes, they did do that in Pittsburgh last
summer. This one was better though; I actually enjoyed this Golgi a lot
if for no other reason than because Trey never missed a note, which you'd
have to admit is not entirely too common these days. The Drowned was
simply out-of-this-world...

I did give Crapstain (aka Prince Caspian, aka Fuckerpants) one
exclaimation point, (!) because it wouldn't have been fair to not give the
tune some props these days. Ok, you can commence beating me now - I've
said it. Yes, I believe some of the Fuckerpants's as of late have had
something worthy of listening to. But whatever, it's still Fuckerpants.

The way this set ended, it could have gone totally out of controll. The
Piper was great of course, the Yem fantastic, the Jane's a-Fuckin Diction
(sorry, I just have to keep calling it that) was great, although they did
not use the trampolines this time like they've been doing in the past.
They did have the tramps in Yem, tho. Llama was close to the perfect
energy-cap to the night...I was just happy to hear something different
than a traditional "closer" as the closer (ie. Zero, Chalkdust, Cavern,
etc)

"Something" is the name of that Beatles tune they played in LA for the
tour opener [10/28/98 - oh so long ago...] and, yes, with a name like that
you can imagine it's very confusing trying to tell people what it's really
called. "No - the *NAME* of the song is actually 'Something'" - it took
me a while to understand that one.

Guyute and Freebird were just too much. Why does Phish keep doing this?
All it does is make me have too good a time and come back for more with
higher expectations which are always for naught because they get blown
away further than the first time...Damn them! ;-)