Okay, this may sound crazy. But here goes. On this date I was an 18yr old fan (girlfriend gave me a copy of A Live One in '95), and had never been to a show. Fucked up right? Most people don't believe me. Being from Washington State and born in 1982 I just never caught the craze, and by the time they were regularly in the PacNW I was busy raving it up and listening to Phish in the background.

Suffice to say I was excited. More than excited. I went in with no expectations, and left completely overly fulfilled.

The night starting out with Wolfman's couldn't have gone better, this being a personal fav. Really solid jam with some nice fart bass at the end. A fully welcomed Jibboo and the first of 2013 - that was a nice treat, possibly the highlight of S1 for me. The BOAF was on FIRE fading into a superb funked out Bitch. Cities, Rift, and Tube were super tight, but super short at the same time. Not like they rushed it, it was like they were experimenting on how fast and tight they could be. The Gin on the other hand was full on DRUNK. It almost seemed like it would fall apart there for a moment, but came roaring back in for a great 12min version. Walk Away was forward, punchy, and loud - great close to S1.

Opening of S2 was nice and sweet, Golden Age isn't a fav of mine, but it was a decent jam leading into a well constructed 46Days. Boogie of course is a treat at any point these days, and I was stoked to funk out with it, and then the Ghost>Carini>Piper hit. Ghost has some really nice play from all four members riding off each other - solid jamming in 10 mins. Same with the Carini - yes it's not a super dark Carini, but goddamn is it gorgeous! The clean piano/guitar towards the end is sublime - well worth revisits for sure. I honestly thought where it was headed could've kept going for an hour as far as I was concerned...but it faded out almost smoothly into a fast and punchy half-tweaky half-pretty Piper that ends in a beautiful little Page solo moving perfectly into a fairly typical, but nicely placed Wading to break up the jamsauce of the past 30 mins of fantastic 3.0 material. Plus, Wading getting played four times a year or so on average these days, so I was more stoked to emo out with the boys for what was a short 6 mins.

Then the Mike's kicked in! Mostly typical 3.0 fashion, but sandwiched between was the a rare Slave! Getting ever stranger with this Mike's Groove was the fact that after Slave - the set ended! Anyone in the know how was automatically like, 'What the fuck is going on? Where's the Paug?!' The boys then come back after a quick dip out during the Encore Cheer and BOOM bust the Paug out - think as far as I've read that's happened twice in Phishtory?! For a first show I was overjoyed to witness such a fake out! Regular old Zero to close out a two song encore with some great energy to wrap up an pretty overlooked 2013 set.

All in all for a first show, I was STOKED. What was to come the next night for my second show was however an entirely different story !

See you all in SF at the end of October!