, attached to 1997-06-25

Review by uctweezer

uctweezer Yup, this is the one I've been looking for. Sure, 6/20 and 6/24 are cool, but this is a much finer take than anything else up to this point on this tour. Coupla new songs out the gate, fine, but then, *again*, we get another f***ing awesome Taste. Respect. Continuing the Billy theme we get the title track, which has become somewhat of a rarity in the 2.0 / 3.0 era, followed by AC/DC bag, which is played all the time in 3.0 but at this point in 1.0 was more on the "every dozen shows" rotation than the "every three night run" rotation -- this was the first Bag in 17 shows, but there's no rust. It stays in the box but there is some nice typical Bag Type I jamming. Then we get another rarity, Old Home Place, and then, I'M TELLING YOU THEY'RE CONNECTED, we get Theme. Taste and Theme, Theme and Taste. The more I see these two beauties pop up in the same set, the more I want to nerd out and do some setlist statistics to find out the highest covariance Phish tunes -- I mean, obviously Mike's and Weekapaug, Silent and Horse, Swept Away and Steep, etc., will have the highest association, but I'm curious about other pairs one wouldn't think of intuitively. New song, new song, new song, My Soul, set break. Good not great, right? Wait till we hit round two...

DWD -> Piper -> DWD! (My reaction gif: http://goo.gl/1IXRy) . DWD covers a lot of ground, bouncing from idea to idea like many of the great DWDs do, before settling on an idea reminiscent of the -> between Wolfman's and JJLC on SSandP (3/1/97) -- I guess this is a European thing? Anyway, that slowly dissolves and we're left with a short but energetic Piper, which builds and builds and where it would normally explode into a 15 minute Piper jam, it explodes back into the DWD theme! Yes! Do yourself a favor and check this out, the segue is silky smooth and cathartic as f***, and for good measure they polish the DWD off. Hell of a half hour to start the set. And without skipping a beat, we get the debut of Meatstick! Kind of. It's more Meatstick lyrics over a hybrid DWD / Low Rider jam (the Meatstick in its current form wasn't laying sausage till 7/3/99, the second time it was played), which then segues perfectly into McGrupp. These segues are *perfect*, thankyouverymuch. This McGrupp is a reggae version, and is totally unique with Makisupa teases throughout and lots of speaking / yelling instead of singing before the final Page-jam-initiated outro takes a more traditional McGrupp form. Right after McGrupp Trey unleashes the sirens that would trick me into thinking Ghost was coming up, but they fade a bit and Makisupa proper rises from the ashes. Keyword: Nug. Trey shows off a bit of his French during the groove as well, and I have no French skills but I believe he's trying unsuccessfully to say "Policeman" in French. Makisupa is unfinished and fades away, and without an HYHU introduction, Fishman sings the parts of (the first and only) Cecilia he can remember. It's a weird moment but strangely nice. We get the obligatory HYHU and another Fishman song, Rock a William, before Antelope sums up the antics of the previous set. "Rye Rye Rocco / Antelope Greg / Been you to have any spike man?" Guyute is the icing on the cake and it's nailed. Nice work boys. This is a proper 4 star show and easily the best second set of the tour. As @waxbanks says, you don't really need to hear the first set, but the second set is worth the download or stream.


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