Just listened to Gotta Jibboo from last night...for the third time this morning What a beauty...groovy as hell...
Great run this year! After 4 nights my body is hurting but the soul is doing well. First New Years show in quite some time that was not a major letdown after 12.30...
Was hoping I'd get to watch one of the webcasts this year, but life (for mostly good reasons!) had other plans for me. So I'm working through the tapes, just started with the first half of 12/28 set one. I always love a "Wolfman's" and the "Roggae" sounded really good.
Finished night 1 during the train ride this morning. Really solid start to the run. That "NMINML > Twist" is an obvious highlight, but they felt pretty on all night even if there weren't other big jam vehicles. "Hood" is fun, as always, and I really liked the encore "CDT".
Same here, PON was the first album I ever heard from them and loved it. After many years of forgetting about phish, thought I'd get back into them and still love that album the best.
Picked up a copy of this bonus disc a few days ago. Tracklist 1 Runaway Jim (Walnut Creek 6/16/95) 31:00 2 Free (Walnut Creek 6/16/95) 8:35 3 Reba (Walnut Creek 6/29/94) 15:36 4 Dog Faced Boy > (Walnut Creek 6/16/95) 2:14 5 Catapult > (Walnut Creek 6/16/95) 0:48 6 Split Open and Melt (Walnut Creek 6/16/95) 15:11 7 Carolina (Walnut Creek 6/16/95) 1:42
I'm not the first to point this out, but these four guys are at another absolute peak right now. The NYE run was expected to be, probably inevitably, a bit of a post BD comedown, but even just the first two nights are incredible. And what I've caught so far (full listens to come) of the last two nights don't give me any reason to believe it will change. I thought 2015 and 2016 were headed in the right direction again, but 2017 is just phenomenal. It's not a '97, nope. But I do think it'll go down as a peak year. If we insist on comparing 'em to the Dead, this is their '89-'90.
One of the things I noticed in the BD shows (still haven't listened to the last two) is I was finding interesting playing in songs I'm not all that crazy about. They've been at a high level for a while now.
After wrapping up 12/29, the fantastic "Chalk Dust" nudged me to revisit the Baker's Dozen "Chalk Dust" (07/28/17), which is even better than I remembered upon revisiting.
Just played that Chalk Dust this morning. I'd read that 12/29 wasn't as good as the other nights but that may be a relative (and subjective) thing. I enjoyed the second set in particular. 12/28 was good too. Looking forward to playing 12/30 which people seemed very happy with. I watched the livestream on NYE which was a lot of fun. Originally I was going to watch it the next day but when I saw on Twitter that the set I opener was Carini I decided to jump in right away.
12/29 definitely doesn't hit as many high points as 12/28, but I really enjoyed the "Sand > CDT > Ghost" run in the second set.
Man, these LivePhish recordings of the NYE run sound phenomenal. They made the right move getting Garry to mix the recordings. He's made some nice changes since the summer and the entire band sound crystal clear and dynamic.
This Amsterdam '97 box together with St. Louis '93 set are among the best stuff the band have ever officially released.
I would add "Ventura" to that. Wonderful performances and a superb fresh mix from those multi-tracks.
I thought this was interesting: There's also a companion article here: Anatomy of a Jam - Phish - The Went Gin - AmarGuitar
Huh. Nothing even close to Chicago, I'm a little bummed. Was hopeful to maybe see Alpine Valley, since it's back open and Dead & Co. will be there. Not seeing many promising gaps to be announced later either.
Request in. I like that they're doing two at the Forum because that should at least meet fan demand there, and maybe then some. Also, I'd like them to generate some night to night momentum in that building and turn it into a "thing." Like BGCA has been a thing.
