Set One Notes:
NICU starts things up with a nice and relaxed, goofy, stoner-vibe, a theme that I am going to feel run throughout this first set. This is a nice way to enter a show and get your head in the right vibe to get a little floaty and giggly. My Soul is one that I can take or leave, but by the time Trey is raging a solo, I am pretty much on board. BEK is the best of two performances so far, the band takes their time to build the groove upwards, getting pretty dirty. I love this groove, and I feel myself inhabiting a headspace where all I want to do with my life is dance to this grimy funk. The debut of Farmhouse is cool, I let myself go to the image it tries to create, taken to memories of warm orange Northeastern late summers, and Trey and Page’s outro is a warm, light rainstorm. The Old Home Place makes sense, then, thematically, and I am feeling a rustic, folksy vibe. The crowd sounded into the Billy Breathes call, and I really think this is a beautiful song, and it sounds great here. This show has settled into a light, lilting, warm haze at this point, and we are coasting along, nice low-key vibes. CTB seems to fit right into this feeling, being an up-tempo call that doesn’t seem to upset this mellow cloud that the set is on. SOAMule calls attention to the UFOs that were witnessed in Denver over those two nights. This is a great time in a set for a guest, and Pete Wernick’s banjo fits here. Check out this ultra-bluegrassy Mule Duel, with the Poor Heart continuing that rustic, folksy vibe from earlier. I assume that Taste is going to end the set. I think that this set, while solid, should definitely not be your stop if you are looking for classic Fall ’97 space jams. This set, though, has been a goofy, happy, stoned, nostalgic jaunt in the countryside. Trey’s tone and note selection on this Taste is immaculate, and this is a contained, but museum-grade Taste. Hello My Baby, and an acapella closer in general, is the right call after that set. It just makes sense, like happy-goofy-nice Phish.

Set Two Notes:
You love to hear the *other* “mule” song come out right here, Jerry, the source of that smell earlier, with that building, hypnotic intro. Before the song proper arrives, the aliens seem to be landing to deliver that old Arkansas mule to us, and as we embark into the jam, Trey is providing some engaging tension-filled lines. Soon, he moves beyond this, and begins messing around with dark wizardry, swirling your consciousness with his bandmates, all locked in, as a group of conjurers. The conjurers begin to open a portal, a three-dimensional window that we all step into, overtaken by views of flickering proto-stars in the young nebula now enveloping our view. All the while, we can feel Jerry pounding outside, on the outside of the portal, but we will never see him again. Our astral body is floating past a very-Frankie Says-sounding gravity well, but our speed increases as we are pulled away towards some obscured giant cosmic object. Suddenly, its illuminated, as Simple explodes into being. Simple was totally unexpected for me, I did not hear it coming until it was right upon me. As the jam out of it develops, I feel that I am riding warm waves of sound over Rocky Mountain forests full of happy little trees. The warm sun soon begins to become obscured by something. Wilson drops, and it is a nice return to structure, snapping me back to reality. It rages, and the false ending builds to a point where it is making my headspace really chaotic, but I’m having fun going crazy. It subsides, and Hood is a good call here. I want to head back outwards and Hood is a pretty choice vehicle. I am really enjoying this second set, it is absolutely drizzled in that special Fall ’97 Sauce. During the jam I feel myself being shrunk down to size, both in terms of my ego and with a physical feeling of heavy top-down weight in my body. Soon though, I am feeling very comfy in the jam, sitting in a warm aural blanket. The peak is nutty, glitching out. Izabella is just damn cool, a great call to close this set. Trey playing the rockstar, raging Hendrix-jams obviously on his brain all throughout this tour. Second set was the winner here folks. Bowie encore feels like an extension of the second set, and they don’t compromise its jamming potential by sticking it in the encore spot. No, this is a fully realized Bowie. The intro starts to part the clouds between the levels of my accessible consciousness, and as we move into the jam, the tension begins to get really serious for a few moments, we peak and descend into madness.

Second set is classic Fall ’97 goodness, first set is friendly but unrequired listening.