Oh hey, it's my first Phish show. =)

This moment was a long time coming for me. I had been listening to Phish shows since the end of 2020, though I didn't become seriously interested in them until the spring of '22. I'll never forget my first tangle with the .Net forum, scouring the thread for the Earth Day show and trying to find out what they were gonna do for the third set. I bought tickets to one of that year's Mansfield shows but ended up not using them because I came down with COVID. The last thing my mom remembers is me asking if we should get insurance for them, which I guess I didn't see the logic in because it was so close to the show. Oops.

So this made that "Free" opener all the sweeter, as I was now free of the burden of... uh, not seeing Phish. This song kicks off a good first set with two back-to-back jam vehicles I actually don't care for much: Wope offers up a generic soaring jam, while Gin does the same thing as most of the post-COVID versions with a busy groove jam. But then comes Wilson, the first performance of a true-blue Gamehendge song since NYE, ending the oft-rumored idea that they had shelved those songs following the complete performance. It rocked in the room, let me tell you. After that, "The Connection" was an interesting moment as, despite being a legit bust-out, I saw a mass exodus to the bathrooms while it was going on. What the hell? I guess people latched onto the idea that it sounded like Diet Number Line, so they bolted. Not me though, and "Thread" afterward was another fun deep cut.

(In case you're wondering: Yes, I do use quotations for the proper names of songs. Sue me.)

Set 2 offered deeper jamming than the first, a non-stop sequence of six songs that were all fun to check off my personal list. Coil as a set opener? Why not! A Scents with a magisterial jam segment that crossfades into more mellow territory? Yup. And I'll never say no to X'eyed in a 4th quarter, this one being an outrageous energy boost in a show that wasn't exactly dragging. Kinda weird that a 21-minute "Tweezer" ends up being the weak link here, but whatever. The band made up for that at my next show.

Overall, this was a perfectly solid introduction to the showgoing experience. The tickets in Section 1(!) I pulled from the lottery were most resplendent; my only wish is that my sister also could've enjoyed them. We ran the gauntlet from the private lot through shakedown prior to the show, and she ended up bailing before entering the pavilion (but after getting food). When I got back to the car, I saw her watching The Bear on her iPhone. At least she was a good sport for driving me there. I have my driver's license now, so hopefully I should be able to do a multi-show run in the future without issue.