On July 15th, 2014 m’lady and I drove down to Canandaigua, New York with a couple of friends for a one-off Phish show (for us, not the band. Their tour raged on while we limped home to Ottawa happy enough with the one show. This time.).

Our companions had booked us a pair of rooms at some strange dorm-like place. I think it was a residence building for the local college or something but no matter, the rooms were big, unbreakable, and full of like-minded concert-goers.

I immediately cracked a can of beer and started mingling. A few beers later I bid my gaggle of new friends farewell and my posse made it’s way to the show.

CMAC (née Finger Lakes) is a great venue. It’s a small shed with a small lawn; basically the same as most other outdoor pavilions in the country but half the size. This is also where I saw my second (was it?) Phish concert, which included a second set that went as follows: Theme From The Bottom>Tweezer.

(Yes friends, when the whole Phish world was abuzz with the Tahoe Tweezer that clocked in at thirty-seven minutes or so – a show m’lady and I were also fortunate to attend – all I could think about was the forty-two minute version I experienced at my second-ever Phish show here in Canandaigua that veered briefly into a verse of My Generation and then went back to a bunch of glorious jammy weirdness.)

Check out the second set from this Canandaigua show:

Down With Disease>Back On The Train>NICU>Gotta Jibboo>Theme From The Bottom>Meatstick>Fuego>The Wedge>Run Like An Antelope

Yes friends, once again Phish played an entire set without once stopping the music, weaving one song into another for a full ninety+ minutes. It was glorious.

It also got a little drunk in there somewhere. After a Character Zero encore (which generally causes a bit of a rift between m’lady and I…I love the tune, she doesn’t) we stumbled back to the dorm where memories of dark whisper-parties with friends new and old flicker in my mind. I seem to recall chatting over cans of beer and being told to move or quiet down…again and again. We’d move, we’d whisper, but ’twas all for naught.

Sometimes you just can’t keep a good party down.
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