Here's another nice show from Summer 98. I don't think this show is quite as good as the three preceding it, but it's no slouch either and it's very funky. The show starts out with another good Moma Dance. This one's groove starts out pretty laid-back, but its intensity eventually picks up. Next up is a standard Beauty of My Dreams. Sample in a Jar is played with a little extra punch. Guyute is well-played and I like the placement coming after two lighter songs. Then we've got the first Ghost on American soil of the Summer and it's excellent. The jam starts out with sweet wah funk from Trey while Page takes the melody on the Rhodes. The jam picks up when Page switches to the piano and Trey starts building the melody. When Page hops on the clav, he and Trey get really hooked up in a Manteca-like groove as the jam keeps building. The jam culminates with a rocking peak and a vocal reprise from Fishman as he shouts the refrain. As Ghost dies down, Limb by Limb starts up. I love Limb by Limb so I'm always happy to hear it and this one reaches a satisfying peak. After a brief ambient outro, a nice Roggae is played. Ghost and YEM in the same set is always great, and this is only the first set. YEM is really funky and thoroughly enjoyable. Overall, this is a great first set.

Set 2 opens with a raging Llama with Trey sounding like Hendrix as he uses the wah effect for much of the song. Wolfman's Brother is slow and funky. This is a typical Piper for the period with the long building intro and the ending coda. The composed part of Tweezer is really funky, as is the beginning of the jam. However, the jam doesn't really become anything more than a little space funk before Trey plays a few blues licks and the band segues into a good JJLC. McGrupp is nice and there's an unusual ambient jam after McGrupp which segues into DwD. This Disease is a hard rocking, type 1 beast, just what the set needed IMO. The Possum, Tweezer Reprise encore is good, as well.

Overall, I like the first set better than the second set.
Highlights - Moma Dance, Ghost through YEM, Llama, Wolfman's, Jam->DwD.

This was my first Phish show. Up until this concert I had been rocking the club scene (Fugazi, Fishbone, local rock acts, etc.) and had not been in an ampitheatre since my early teenage years when I caught some heavy metal shows. So the size of the venue threw me off for the first set, which was excellent. Won't go into a song by song review but the flow and selection of everything was just perfect and the YEM to close the first set was just perfect.

But the juic was in the second set and man was it flowing. The Llama set 2 opener was blazing and they never stopped. All in all, I had so much fun getting acclimated to the lot scene, meeting great people and listening to an amazing band.

The next night in Ventura sealed the deal for me and I've been seeing as many shows as possible ever since.

It cannot be overstated how tight and fresh all the SOTG songs are for this whole tour. "Standard" type I versions of songs like Moma, Guyute, Limb, and Roggae brought the heat night in, night out. This show features two solid sets with fantastic jamming in Ghost, Limb, YEM, Tweezer (short, but sweet), and McGrupp. Ghost (High energy type 1 version) > Limb is my highlight, but I can see how McGrupp > Jam would be yours.

4/5 Standard great Summer 98 Phish show.

Get this one for McGrupp! Beautiful

This one starts off hot and heavy with an infectious Moma Dance and an overall nicely played Set I with the hidden gem of a Ghost which absolutely smokes. The setlist may not look like much on paper but the flow and vibe is all there. A fantastic YEM closes out an amazing set I and there's still lots of goodies ahead in set II.

This is one of the underrated shows of the summer. I've never really heard a major pitch for it and I was not expecting to love it nearly as much as I did. Don't skip it if you are trying to hit the Summer 1998 highlights.

This was my first show! Kicking it on the lawn, meeting some like minded folk and enjoying the day. A great night.

https://forum.phish.net/forum/permalink/1377869236

While most performing artists play single-set shows, Phish has made a career of playing two-set shows. This is almost certainly because of the precedent set by The Grateful Dead, although the practice likely goes back further than that. Playing multiple sets per show required the band to expand their repertoire quickly, and develop both their musical abilities and their physical stamina. In the liner notes to A Picture Of Nectar, Phish acknowledges that playing three sets a night, three nights a week at Nectar's "taught us how to play".

Phish also modeled their approach to first and second sets after The Grateful Dead, with the first set typically featuring tight song arrangements showcasing the band's versatility, and more experimental, psychedelic music in the second set. When the band went through a seismic shift in all aspects of their art between 1996 and 1997, they changed this perception, eliminating the "warm-up" aspect of their first sets. This resulted in some of the band's most highly regarded shows (11/17/97, 12/7/97), but also a few shows where the first set is more creative and enjoyable than the second. But even then, our favorite band would drop a couple of gems in the second half that are worthy of inspection under the jeweler's loupe.

Phish hit the ground running at the start of their Summer '98 U.S. tour, and like with 11/3/94, I find it odd that 7/19/98 isn't as highly regarded as the shows that surround it. The setlist displays several jam "heavy hitters", and there is plenty of laid-back funk along with blazing rock and roll. Tweezer is set up to carry the second set, but as with 10/27/94, this version fails to latch on to the deep funk or blissful groove like other versions from this period. But then an angular descending bass line from Mike right at the end of McGrupp flips a switch on the band, and they return to improvisational territory previously visited in the jam out of Horn four nights earlier in Portland. I find these five minutes of improv immensely rewarding and special, particularly in the context of such a mammoth show.