My third Phish show was really inspired for me and made me hop in my car the next day and head up to Ardmore, marking my first multi night run of shows. Suzi was an auspicious beginning for me as it seemed to be on every tape I got and The Chase was lost on me at the time. Possum was when things started simmering and you the band was firing on all cylinders. Fee/Reba?YEM was a fantastic mid set run and my first GTBT put a fat exclamation point on the set.

The Bayou was a great place to see a show as the parking lot was always chill in between sets. We spent a few minutes outside an hurried back in with expectations running high. I had quit drinking at this point in my life and the music took on new dimensions Dinner and A Movie was strong and my first Tweezer was welcomed as it was, even then, the one with potential for a jam. The rest of the set was broken up with Uncle Penn standing alone and Divided Sky doing the same. Love You was fun as usual and had a trombone solo as opposed to the vacuum. A strong Mike's Groove closed the frame out. Lawn Boy had grown on me since seeing it the December before and was a great juxtaposition to the noise of BBFCFM.

I was a little worried with the audio quality at the start of Suzy, but it gets better towards the end. The Chase was executed well and drops straight into Possum. At this point it's obvious there's a lot more energy in this show than 6/2, which is surely due to the better crowd. Reba is alright; the jam is borderline too noodly and doesn't do a whole lot for me. YEM is good; up to the jam is fairly average and then the jam is pretty sweet, Trey gets down. The vocal jam is a lot more fun and not as angry and abrasive as 6/2, but there is a drop out in the recording for a second or two. This Lizards is much better as well - you can really tell the boys and the crowd are having a lot of fun.

The fun is back in the second set with My Sweet One and Dinner/Movie. Tweezer is pretty badass. It gets really wild and heavy for a couple minutes there. The deaccelerando and return are executed well. Not surprisingly, Divided Sky is much better here as well, except that Trey seems to start to run out of ideas toward the end of the jam. Love You is good; Fish lays down a fun trombone solo. Mike's is great, lots of energy. Hydrogen is Hydrogen and then the energy picks back up in Paug, which sees some craziness from Trey (that I believe may constitute some "Machine Gun Trey", thoughts?). A polar opposites encore wraps this one up.

The energy in this show is very high and inviting. An okay jam for a fairly early Reba, a fun YEM jam/vocal jam, a nice Lizards, a nice early Tweezer, a good Divided Sky, some good 'ol fashioned Henrietta Love You, a tasty Mike's Groove, and a very interesting pairing for the encore puts this show, IMO, at about 3.3-3.5 stars. I don't think I can quite justify putting in a 4 star rating, so I'm gonna go with 3.

Maybe I was in a bad mood when I listened to this second set, I dunno. The first set is thoroughly average, IMHO, with just some minor flubs and an OK YEM (which does, for the record, > pretty nicely out of Reba, so that's something different.) GTBT, though, was a little sloppy. Most of the second set is pretty much taverage as well, but for some reason I found the Tweezer and Weekapaug Groove to be highly annoying. In Tweezer, Trey uses a lot of sustain to bring the jam way down, but instead of exploring that, he just kinda rips back into the jam, which then turns into a sustain wank-fest. And Weekapaug didn't sound good to me, either. And I think BBFCFM is an odd way to end a show. It just clunks at the end and really needs something after it. So, for whatever reason, I didn't like the second set much at all, and I'm gonna go two stars. Maybe I should listen to it again, though.