another great show. this one’s for the “quality-over-quantity” crowd—no jams over 20 minutes but the second set packed a ton of great improvisation and amazing energy.

a note on the first set: as i saw mentioned in the setlist thread, this first set was a bit sleepy, as it were. mcgrupp is always amazing to hear, but besides that there isn’t much to write home about in this frame. the energy seemed fairly low, to be frank; as my show partner @colforbin310 put during the set, it felt “like a festival day set than a saturday night arena show.”

but who cares about all that? not me man. because that second set absolutely ripped.

in yesterday’s show recap, @thewatchfulhosemaker used baseball as an analogy for phish. i will build off that here. tonight’s show was as if your favorite baseball team gave up 2 runs early in the game and looked a bit lost at the plate for a few innings. then, suddenly, in the bottom of the 5th, they get a big extra base hit to put a guys on second (the absolutely awesome tube jam), then hit a monster 2-run second-deck homer to tie the game (a searing, face-melting, roof-raising ASIHTOS).

after that, they just break the game wide open. DWD -> -7 verse > DWD was sweet, pillowjets got deep despite its short duration, and 2001 featured a standout second jam with some intoxicating interplay between trey and page. the Chalkdust was another monster home run just for good measure; machine-gun trey reared his head and injected the united center with a shot of pure adrenaline. cap it off with While My Guitar Gently Weeps > First Tube encore and you’ve got yourself a nice win. great show, despite a lackluster first frame.