Last night, Phish delivered something that we haven't seen in a while. They managed to combine their current routine of excellently jamming out a few classic songs in their repertoire (I'm looking at Chalkdust, Tweezer, and Ghost) all while providing a show full of tour debuts and bust outs. For me, one of the best parts of going back and listening to shows that occurred in 2011 and 2012 isn't going back and listening to jams. Most of the jams from early 3.0 can't even touch what Phish does today. I go back and listen because the Phish song rotation didn't seem nearly as tight back then. It wasn't uncommon to have a song from "Exile On Mainstreet" show up or to have the song selection really change from the previous shows. Phish gave us the pleasure of hearing uncommon tunes last night while also doing some top level jamming.

Set one had a few highlights for me. We got the tour debuts of My Sweet One, Wilson, Timber (Jerry), Roses, Ginseng Sullivan, and It's Ice. Timber had a nice little jam on it, but was pretty normal for the Timber (Jerry)'s we get in 3.0. As far as Roses goes, it was really cool of Trey to give Ween a shout out and I hope Gene and Dean get back together. Ginseng was really fun to hear in this set because we don't get a ton of Phish-grass these days. It's Ice had a cool little jam. Trey did a good job of nailing most of the notes and was playing really cleanly. It even sounded like he tried to tease Ginseng sometime in between the third and fourth minute mark but abandoned the idea. It's Ice ended in a funky groove that the whole band seemed to be locked into, then we got a >Bathtub Gin. I think this Gin is definitely worth a listen. It's not a Riverport Gin or anything like that, but I certainly wouldn't sleep on it if I was listening to this show.

Set two opened with a Chalkdust that, I gotta admit, I have to re listen to. I wasn't being attentive enough to fully analyze it but it had some nice jamming. Towards the end of Chalkdust the jam got very riff based. This culminated into the awesome ->Tweezer. That segue was easily the highlight of the show for me. About seven minutes into this Tweezer there were only remnants of the original composition floating around. Trey seemed to get rid of this by throwing down a Timber (Jerry)-esque groove. This made the jam funk based until roughly the eleven minute mark. Things transitioned from funk to a very riff based jam. This eventually turned back into spacey funk, into an ascending riff, and finally, back into spacey-ness. It was out of this spacey-ness that the >Lizards emerged. It had it's usual jazziness and some sweet work from Trey and Page about two-thirds into the song. We were then treated to the always fun Makisupa followed by an awesome > into Ghost. The jam got going with Mike and Page making things spacey as Trey soloed and about six minutes in, it turned into a Chalkdust-like jam. This Chalkdust-like jam eventually went back into the classic Ghost composition and we got a little bit of Page action before the > into Harry Hood. The Hood was it's classic happy and uplifting self and we got the always triumphant "You Can Feel Good" ending. Finally the show ended with a >Tweeprise. For the encore we got another tour debut, Good Times Bad Times. It's hard to complain about a show that ends with this song. Everyone knows it and you get some Trey shredding.

I webcasted this show but it was so good that I felt compelled to share my thoughts. I don't ever really do this so that should tell you something about the awesomeness that occurred at Blossom last night.