It’s Only Getting Better
3.7.09 (C. Jones)
With a show that brought the fire from the “Sanity” opener to the “Tweeprise” encore, Phish left the audience in awe and salivating for summer tour. With a setlist that reads as a joke, Phish created a “perfect” show. The band absolutely left no doubt in anyone’s mind or heart as to who their favorite band on the planet is again. After nearly twelve hours of emotional and enthralling Phish music, I’m spent. I will absolutely write about the show in detail, but it is going to have to be after a day of transit back to the west coast.
In a nutshell, the band took their final step from somewhat structured jamming into completely free flowing improv with a 22 minute exploration of “Down With Diesease.” And the fantasy setlist became a joke when the combination of “Twist > 2001 > Moma” dominated the second half of the set. Phish is back. Miner is out.
No Spoilers is up for all three nights!!
09. totally agree. I said it before…out from under small amount of rust that’s left shines a brilliant band.
just popped in set 2 sunday, DWD > ???????!
i’v heard mention of 2001, twist, slave….but that’s all i know and i can surmise it’s not a 4 songer..
maze is a face melter.
i no longer have a face.
FACE MELT:
http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a26/Harpua03/Phish/TreyFaceMeltage.gif
LOL. exactly.
This weekend as a whole was the best Phish experience I have had in at least 10 years. This has been stated in other posts, most likely more eloquently but, Phish is an experience! The trip getting to the show, hanging with friends, butterflies pre-show and excitement when the lights go out. All of these and more add to what Phish is and will be. I can’t leave out CK5 either, who worked absolute magic this weekend.
Of course none of these things would be possible without the music. There were times this weekend I found myself dancing with a craze or wondering how they dropped back into a song from a jam. There were also times I found myself saying, “oops wrong key” or “that didn’t start off well”. But when these flubs or whathavya happened there were always good things that happened after. There was also a totally different passion or feeling coming off the stage this weekend. Like they really want to be up there rippin’ it up. I do not recall that happening at any post hiatus shows I was at. I remember some bad shows that kept getting worse. Especially the Hampton shows after the hiatus I remember looking on stage and thinking what in the hell is going on? They dont even look like they want to be here. This weekend was a totally different vibe and the music that was being played well far outweighed the flaws. I am very excited to see what is next!
P.S. Loved the Stash jam
on to set 2. Disease jam. SSSSSICK!!!~~~!!!. I swear…Page alone is worth the price of admission…I can hear his awesomeness driving the rest of band to be as good as him…and they are!
Disease>Below – magic. We need some Page is a Jedi too stickers. The Keytar ripped. Sunday was hands down the fire.
thanks for your excellent writing and keeping us updated, your opinion is valued and it means alot , especially to those of us who could not make the shows, thank you.
You are the man! Thanks for the beautiful picture you paint with your words. As I read this aloud to a friend I had a really hard time not crying throughout the whole article. I am invigorated beyond belief. For now, the world is a lot better with your writing about the obvious stimulus provided by Phish’s service commitment!!!
Thanks again to Miner for the No Spoiler action this weekend. It made a lot of people who couldn’t make it down to VA enjoy the weekend with some great sounds and was great if you resisted temtation to find out what they played beforehand. Kind of like the internets version of Tivo.
Good Times baby…keep them rolling.
The weekend was perfect and the playing was far better than I thought it would be. I noticed trey had kind of his ’97 rig with the homemade cabinets and the CAE preamp and stuff, but I was hoping for that solid old style compressed sound. I guess maybe in the end he decided that the compressor did not work well for his new “muted chickin pickin slightly warbled” style of playing. I really noticed it on his solo tour and it seems he’s brought it to phish. God I can’t wait for summer. Alpine is gonna be just too much.
Thank you so much not only for providing the no spoilers download, but also the sound quality of those recordings are FANTASTIC! I got to go to the first two shows but had to bounce for the Sunday night. I listened to the no spoilers version of night 3, and oh man, the sound is just fantastic (almost preferable to the SBDs from livephish.com). The levels are great, there isn’t much fan noise, and just all around crispiness (which of course has something to do with the mk41s, but still…). thanks so much for providing this service, I hope other people enjoyed the excitement of listening to these shows without knowing the setlist in advance – it made all the difference to me!!