, attached to 2013-10-27

Review by FirstTubeCT

FirstTubeCT After giving it a few listens musically and structurally the XL Center show was very solid. My top10 highlights are:

1- RnR opener with Lou chant and tribute by Trey
2- Tube jam starting at 50 sec mark is short but epic. My favorite jam of show I like the fast funk.
3- Fee segue with megaphone was first for me.
4- Maze blue light show CK5 doing work this first set is really smoking.
5- NICU Page jam Play it, Leoooooo! Play it!
6- Tweezer at 1:58 mark when 1000+ glowsticks were unleashed evenly around the XL by unknown forces.
7- Tweezer and Golden Age extended jams.
8- 2001 ebb and flow always a crowd pleaser.
9- Loving Cup singalong encore.
10 - Tweezer Reprise's heavy bass great way to end show

On the flipside here are my lowlights:

1- The three 20-something bros with Red Sox gear who as the lights first downed powered into the perfect space I'd been sitting having nice conversations since 6:30pm.
2- After one Red Sox guy physically gives me a little shoulder I slide to the right then the 20-something hippie guys immediately in front started dancing backwards by swinging their smelly dreads in my face. This dance backwards technique is new to me.
3- Start backing up and two short buff dudes all lit up with glow and sweating balls power in immediately behind me and start singing every word to Fee as loud as they can.
4- Continue slow small step migration to get space and guy now in front pulls out camera and starts filming an entire song with iPhone held above his head, blocking my view, with brightness all the way up. The whole time rocking it up and down to make unwatchable. Triple faux pas.

During Walls decide at setbreak I'm holding ground and sitting down next to cool Dad-Mom-Son combo I was talking to earlier who put down blanket with tape and haven't moved the entire show. Good set break talks with them.

6- Second set starts and group of about eight 20-somethings who all smell like they haven't showered in days power in front of us. Looking at their wrist I see no wristbands.
7- Next about 5 more of their friends power in with them and start this technique of dancing backwards, where they have 3 feet in front of them, while they swing their heads into my face behind them. Obviously trying to make more space for themselves.
8- At this point I'd had enough and put my hands on one of the dancing backwards offenders and say something like Come on dude. Please give me some space... and point to the 3-feet of empty space in front of him. He proceeds with a yeah man whatever look with thumb up and continues.
9- Repeat #8 with me this time me putting hands on back and moving him forward. In which he turns and we lock eyes and I saw drug-fueled rage I thought he might take a swing.
10- Said rage eyes switches spots with one of his homies whose a girl and she doesn't violate front space but starts smoking a cig and blows the smoke downwards so it wafts everywhere. Smoke all the weed you want, but cig smoke is taboo, especially the time of year. Rude 101.

Yeah I'm getting older (44) but I've been to 100s of concerts (20 Phish) and the audacity of the above offenders was disturbing. I was at the Pearl Jam concert two days before, in the exact same spot (~15 back, dead center), and the PJ fans were much more easy to co-exists with and didn't have this strange sense of fuck you entitlement the Phish fans had. Especially the 2nd set ones who didn't have wristbands. And this technique of dancing backwards by moving your head back into a person's face to make more space for yourself is not cool. At all. A lot of bad individualist vibes being spread around. Maybe it's an east coast, or Sunday night we're all burnt out from DCU thing, not sure and doesn't matter when you go to a Phish show please be considerate and respectful to those around you.

/rant


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