I love these middle two nights of red rocks. sure, i like the first night of the ball and the second night of the deeer creek run better than anything they did at red rocks, but there are some very notable moments at this gem of a show.

makisupa policeman is an appropriate opener after the "disturbance" in morrison the night before. you can read phish.net notes on the makisupa. rift works well here with a nice little "this is red rocks/this is the edge" quote. suzy greenberg keeps the energy flowing with a nice loose jam in there, complete with some simple teases. very good suzy. simple does its thing before petering into theme from the bottom. now, simple, at this point in time, was not the jam monster it would come in the fall, but this one and the deer creek version give you a good idead of what direction simple was goiing. the rest of this set was well-played but pretty standard. antelope did shine in the set closing slot.

the curtain really rips here in the opening slot before giving way to a very strong tweezer, maybe my favorite of the year. trey really drives home the norwegian wood teases, which are all over this tweezer jam. i'm not a big caspian fan, but it fits well here after a very strong tweezer. they revisit aditl after debuting here the year before. as the rain starts to really come down they work through the bbffcfm and the fishman section. this section of the set is fun, but there is not enough "serious music" in the meat of this set for my taste. from caspian to the end of hyhu, it is a pretty jam free set, but they make up for it. this rain, red rocks harry hood is a beast. trey and page really shine here, and gordo and fishman play with great precision, discipline, and patience. they take this one all the way down before driving it all the way up into tweezer reprise. johny b. is a nice rowdy encore.

overall, i really like the first set, and the second set is front and back heavy. it does lag a bit in the middle, and thats what keeps this from being an all time keeper, based solely on musicianship. although, many consider all 4 nights to be a keeper just because it was the last redrocks run for 13 years.

highlights:

set 1:
makisupa policeman, suzy>simple, antelope

set 2:
the curtain>tweezer, harry hood