In order to get stoked for the impending throw-down that will be Summer Tour 2013, I've been re-listening to some Summer Tour 2010 Leg I shows. If, as the kids say, you were "hip to the scene" back in June 2010, you will likely remember the pure euphoria the entire fan base was feeling during this tour. I'm not a huge detractor of 2009, I think there is lots of great shit from the first year of 3.0, but the opening notes from Toyota Park made it painfully obvious that this was a different band. Rejuvenated, if you will. I remember listening to my AUD of Toyota Park in the early afternoon on 6.12.10 and just grinning ear to ear. I was still pretty "noobish" back then, but I still knew. Shit was different. On another level.

Now, of course, this tour has been completely overshadowed by the three that have followed it: Fall '10, Summer '11, and Summer '12. Each of which, in my opinion, have blown its preceding tour out of the water. ::fingers crossed this trend continues:: It's interesting, at the time, the band sounded reinvented and rejuvenated, but now, with the benefit(?) of hindsight, there is still quite a bit of easily identifiable rust. An innocuous miscue at the end of Julius nearly train wrecks the song and things generally still feel a little forced, like they're reaching for something that is just barely out of grasp. However, nostalgia and rust aside, listening back to these early Summer '10 shows is a lot of fun. There's a bunch of great music within this tour, rust notwithstanding.

That said, the first set is somewhat lackluster. Summer of '89 is a song that I just don't think fits well within the Phish canon. I appreciate the meaning and connection Trey has with it, but it sticks out like a sore thumb, especially given its length. Wolfman's, Foam, and Possum > Moma were my favorite parts of this set. The Reba is not particularly good, it just doesn't go anywhere and features some of Trey's much maligned "whale call". I actually didn't mind "the whale" call in the context of spacier jams, but in the middle of eighth note lines in Reba? No, thank you.

The second set is much better and features a great Light -> Billy Breathes (great in song pairing and segue, but the Light jam isn't particularly amazing), and Tweezer > Theme > Hood. The best part of the latter segment is the spacey jam in last four minutes of Tweezer. None of these jams are *that* great in retrospect, but this set flows really nicely and definitely has some solid moments. The encore is one of my favorites, and not only for infamous double Tweeprise. The Sleeping Monkey featuring some great Trey banter and audience singing is great too. The double Tweeprise is awesome too, of course.

This is in the upper echelon of shows from Leg I of Summer Tour 2010, and is definitely worth checking out, even if the band has far surpassed themselves by now.