After coming back to our campsite at 7AM at the Allgood festival in 2004, still absolutely ripfaced (on the back of the worm, you may say) my buddy puts on this show and crawls into his tent. I can't sleep for the life of me, so I'm sitting in my chair, absolutely faced, smoking a cigarette, watching the sun come up and listening to the Stash from this show. At about 18 minutes in and continuing till the end, I discovered that this jam is, in fact, the meaning of life, and quite possibly the most amazing and deeply beautiful thing ever played by any band, ever. I was absolutely dumbfounded by the sheer magnitude of it all, and I'm hardly a brah who finds spiritual connections like that.
I'll never be able to recapture THAT lightning in a bottle moment (and I had heard this show many times before without that revelation), but it's heartening to know that to this day when I listen to that Stash, it can still pick me up and sweep me off to a far away place where everything is beautiful and makes perfect sense.
Yep, on the back of the worm indeed. Best Stash ever for my money and maybe the best single jam Phish ever did.
The rest of the show is no joke either, and it's companion piece the night before may even be stronger as a complete show. It's not often when Phish's hyped up shows not only meet, but exceed, expectations but these two nights in Amsterdam are everything you could ever hope for.