https://forum.phish.net/forum/permalink/1378109945

Junta and Hoist were the first two Phish albums I listened to, but it was Rift that blasted me backward and pinned me to the wall. I was a sophomore majoring in Jazz Studies at the College of Music at University of North Texas, and Rift was a perfect amalgam of everything I was learning: it had chordal harmonies in the voices and instruments, poly-rhythms galore, intricate fugues, blistering tempos, astounding musical interaction between rhythm section instruments, and plenty of mind-melting guitar lines that took hours to get under the fingers. And when I wasn't practicing, I would lie on my bunk bed and listen to the album, and wonder, “just where did all that music come from?”

As it turns out, it came from the mind of a guitarist and composer who couldn't sit still, so he spent all of his down-time over a 3-month, 49-show tour working on new music. As a composer, Trey had essentially commissioned himself to write music for Page, Mike, Fish, and himself to perform as a group. The new songs wouldn't be debuted on stage until Trey was able to harvest more poems from Tom Marshall, and have the band learn and rehearse them. Fall '91 was the tour where the entire band had reached full mastery of their current repertoire (Foam was the most-played song on that tour), and Trey sensed that the other three (and the audience) were ready for the music to become "insanity"-level difficult. (And of course Mike contributed two new songs, the tricky Weigh ant the impossible Mound.)

Hopefully, Trey did only have to pay two bits for the drastic shave-and-a-haircut he received in Santa Fe the previous week, but losing his hair did not cause him to lose his Samson-like prowess on the Languedoc. The circulating soundboard features that original blonde Languedoc guitar right up front in the mix (once the levels are boosted during Sparkle), and Trey's playing shines in the spotlight. Take The 'A' Train features the sweet clean guitar tone whistling Dixie, The Landlady > Destiny Unbound brings a snarl to it, and Divided Sky and the Mike's Groove let the 'doc fly like a hawk, circling in the sky before shrieking and swooping down to snatch up its prey - our ears! And honestly, how could the show where Trey acknowledges this site's namesake possibly be rated as low as this?