Obviously, as my first Phish show, this show gets the obligatory 5 star review.

However, even looking past the idea that this show was my first show by such a phenomenally talented and magical collective of musicians which I was far too late to catch on to, this show was quite simply a great show.

The only long jam was the super psychedelic, textured, and ambient - yet intense - jam in Harry Hood, which in total clocked in at just short of 19 minutes and was pure bliss. Stash had a nice jam as well, although a bit more brief, and not as groundbreaking in the grand scheme of things. Wingsuit had a nice jam of sorts/outro solo, finished by Mike fiddling with the drill to close out set one. Wingsuit also contained what was to me the only noticeable mistake on the night. Somehow Trey got a bit lost or sidetracked earlier on in the song, and started singing a lyric, and then played a brief guitar lick/solo, and then went back into the "put your Wingsuit on" part of the chorus. Maybe that's just the arrangement of that tune (I'm honestly not as big on that tune as some of the other new ones so I can't remember) or maybe it was something entirely intentional but in the moment it seemed like he did mess up just a bit.

It was great to hear tunes like "Back on the Train" and "Birds of a Feather" (which I was particularly psyched to hear), "Bouncing Around the Room", "Stealing time from the Faulty Plan", and so on, executed so well in set one as well. It's almost like they knew it was my first Phish show so although they wanted to play a ton of the new stuff, which they played with authority, they also wanted to play some of the more commonly played tunes that happen to be fan favorites, and do so very well as opposed to phoning it in. Make no mistake. This set and this shot in general was not phoned in at all.

Then we have set 2. I only have recordings to go off of since this was my first show, but this set seemed to have an energy and intensity that I'd never heard in 3.0 to this point, especially for a tour opener. The Mike's Groove sandwich which contained Simple, Free, Waiting All Night, and Ghost in between both "loaves of bread" so to speak just may have surpassed the outstanding grilled cheese I had from the food truck that was on the concourse leading into the venue (best grilled cheese ever, by the way).

Anyway, even if Trey did slightly botch a small portion of "Wingsuit", and even if there were 5 songs off the new CD in total which does in retrospect seem like a lot, none of that really mattered. They were super tight, jamming in ways I'd never heard before in 3.0 on any of the recordings I have purchased or audience recordings I've downloaded (even if not all of the jams were long, they had a great intensity and fire in their playing), and it was just an all around wonderful experience.

So, Phish, it was a wonderful experience. See you at Randalls Island night two, and hopefully much more in the future/in years to come.