Just about every version is played with fire and creativity; there's strange little embellishments everywhere, like the alternate strumming melody in the opening of Possum, the odd little dead end riff roads they drive down throughout said Possum (and not just during the jam), the utterly unhinged dissonant little whistling jam they get into after the Possum ends, etc.

Though this sort of thing was deployed in much more limited form throughout their career to date, this is the exact mid-point of August 1993, universally understood as the dawning of the age of Type II jamming, so these deconstructionist build-to-burn embellishments just burst out of every seam and find their pressurized apex in the Reba jam from this show in St. Louis, 8-16-1993. The jam immediately abandons every vestige of what we'd known to happen in every previous Reba jam and lights out for uncharted territory. This is archetypal Type II jamming, just initated and already in full flower, the first massive evolutionary leap forward since 1990

But then there's the rest of the show (we're not even mid way through the nearly 90-minute first set and already we've smashed through several walls), which showcases incredibly tight and gassed-up playing, including a goofy rest-of-Reba - which also ends with a unique little spontaneous jam that almost sounds planned. It seems the reason why so many versions in this show sound so bonkers and overspill their compositional bounds is that the band is so frigging tight from years on the road that they could play these songs in their sleep and underwater, and they're maybe getting a little bored playing the same songs the same way all the time

The Foam might be the best, most iconoclastic version of all time (it's by far my favorite version of one of my favorite tunes); the SOAM (my favorite jam vehicle) is good and weird and creative - it feels like you've just witnessed a magic trick when it ends. They even get into some odd little dissonant full-band digressions in Coil right before Page takes over his solo

Trey embellishes the verse portions of Mike's Song with blithe, playful soloing, the Faht is an eyebrow-raising bit of experimental Phish that works (so long as you boost the volume a lot); and the 15-minute Weekapaug features extended Santana teases and is otherwise bursting at the zipper with unhinged ideas. Even the Mound is a little weirder than usual (a little). It's Ice is tight, fast, and fiery, as is the MF, MF which brings the weirdness back at its conclusion. Big Ball Jam ends up sounding like a natural extension of the strangeness of the MF, MF ending, and it's testament to how expectation-destroying this show is that even the BBJ is more musically interesting than usual; it ends with Fishman saying "Aw fuck man" for some reason

In yet another surprise, they even play a jazz standard in the fourth quarter - this is one of those kinds of things I wish Phish would bring back. Nowadays it's hard to remember how much jazz there was in early Phish; by 1993 it was already rare for them to play something like Take The A Train. And even Take The freakin A Train is embellished with odd little touches and filigrees. If that wasn't enough, they play Good Times, Bad Times, which - surprise! - also gets deconstructed; it digresses into an atypical, dissonant jam after the vocals end

There's four jam chart entries in the first set alone. Take a look at the song lengths just a couple months before, then take a look at the song lengths in Set I of this show: the Possum is 13 minutes long; the Reba 19 minutes; the Foam 11.5 minutes; the SOAM 12.5 minutes; and the Coil 10.5 minutes. On their previous tour, most of these songs (not Reba) would average 10 minutes or fewer in duration

The whole show just feels to me like the precise location where before becomes after in the history of 1.0. The only things I'm less than thrilled with in this show are: the Rocky Top (because fucckk that song. It's the last thing they play and the Amazing Grace is a much more fitting end); and the Faht is way too quiet on both the SBD and the AUDs of this show. Otherwise, everything just flows so beautifully. They sound eager to play and willing to just fucckk around, but this isn't the mess that is 7-12-1996, to name another show where they elect to fucckk around on stage; in St. Louis in the summer of 1993, Phish was absurdly comfortable in their chosen material and audibly confident that they'll all land on their feet at exactly the same time if they fucckk up

This is a show I suggest everyone check out if they haven't already