Ok, the show just ended, and from my iPhone, I have decided it is important to share with everyone my unbiased opinion of the show I just saw and also to fluff the shit out of this band Phish whom I love so much. I just can’t write anything bad. Also, I’m gonna ignore everyone I came here with and just write what I want in the hopes people like my reviews.
Anyways……ZOMG! BEST SHOW EVER! Seriously, if you weren’t here, you will forever have a hole in your soul where this show should have been. Why didn’t you drive to Ypsilanti for this show? Seriously, we ALL knew it would be THE sleeper show of the tour and that makes me so much headier than you. Because guesstimating which show will be the ‘sleeper show’ makes me 100% accurate (since I said at one point or another that all shows were potential sleepers, negating the word itself) and boosts my credibility with heads on par with the likes of Tom Marshall – the greatest songwriting partner ever!
So here’s the setlist:
Set 1: Ya Mar, Cars Trucks Buses, It’s Ice, HYHU->Love You->HYHU, Down with Disease->Possum, Secret Smile (75 minutes)
Set 2: 2001->Anything but me, Lizards, Reba->Julius, 46 days->Free, YEM (95 minutes)
Encore: Character Zero (10 minutes)
See? You missed this! How awesome am I for rubbing that in? But hey, you’ll be listening to it in 20 minutes anyways so who cares? (I do, I need this, and I have nothing else) Ain’t technology great like that?
Yet again, Phish has outdone themselves even when last night you thought they couldn’t have outdone themselves anymore – they go and blow your mind again. They welcomed the crowd with an amazing version of The Mustangs ‘Ya Mar’, and although you probably know that The Mustangs wrote this song they have played since the 80s, I’m gonna get some “cred” from mentioning that again. Yes, I have listened to The Mustangs version quite a bit, but Phish does it better. Trust me.
The high energy that was built up in the first song carried over to every single other song in this show. Every. Single. One. That’s right fans, this show was a 9/10, but I’ll make that a 10/10 in a few paragraphs. Just watch me fluff.
CTB was sweet, and abbreviating it is even cooler, am I right? Next up was It’s Ice. Holy shit. It’s Ice WAS AMAZING! Page was ON man, he was ON! Even that part in the middle he has always played pretty much the same – that was unique as shit! I love Page because he has Parkinson’s (I heard it on PT, so it must be true). But at least he has a Lear Jet to make trips to the Mayo Clinic and he looks good in his new shirt. There, I don’t have to mention Page anymore. That’s all you need to know – his song, his shirt, his health and his jet. Let me now get to blowing (reviewing less than critically) Trey and Mike because they are the greatest guitarists EVER!
First, let me tell you that Fishman can channel, that’s right, he can fucking CHANNEL Syd Barrett. I should know, I listened to tons of Pink Floyd although nothing from the Syd era. Trust me though, you need to seek this Love You out. The vacuuming goes on for a good 8-10 seconds longer than normal.
Ok, so Trey comes back to his guitar and we get Down with Disease! Let the shredding begin! Mike dropped bass notes like he always does, but this time was even cooler than 3 nights ago because it’s fresher in my mind. So I’ll put this one down as best of tour. Debate OVER. Until they play another DWD. Then THAT ONE is the best ever!
The band got all experimental towards the end and by the band, I mean Trey. He is like the best part of Phish, so let me talk about him. Trey is a god. Literally. He heals wounds. He has urinated in my ears and gotten rid of wook flu. He did drugs and learned from it, therefore, he is a god. When he segued into Possum, I was one of the first to note this and you can tell from my Tweet on it. What, you aren’t following me on Twitter? Follow me: @Phishphluffer420
Even though Gordo sings Possum, I’ll have you know that Trey is the star of this and all songs really. He built up a massive crescendo, a word I looked up to mean ‘build up’. Doing what they do best, they played the song really well and other phrases and strings of words that show I can be critical of the band while really just fluffing the hell out of them. Furthermore, let me compare Possum to one of Phish’s influences, Frank Zappa. Trey loves Zappa a lot and you can tell because Possum sounds JUST LIKE Easy Meat! I know this because I downloaded Zappa’s entire discography the other day because I heard Trey was influenced by him. Even though Easy Meat doesn’t sound a bit like Possum, or vice versa, I’m gonna make this judgment and you can just agree with me because that’s what this review is here to do – gain your trust by reassuring you Phish is incapable of flaws since they came back in March of 2009.
Then Trey decided to play Secret Smile. I cried. Others went to the bathroom or to get beer. I don’t know why, this song is amazing. It encompasses everything I love about Phish: Trey, an acoustic guitar, and the other 3 just sitting back and watching Trey be a god.
Set break was 40 minutes long and fans stretched their legs, bitched about Secret Smile, and relaxed. I sat idly by on my iPhone taking notes about the show.
The boys opened up second set with a Type-II laden version of 2001, which was originally called Also Sprach Zarathrusta. I know this because I Googled it. The jamming kept going places, here, there, that place, voici, voila, aqui, and so on until the continuity was broken up very nicely by a rough transition into Anything but Me. You should know that I LOVE this song! It is awesome and I cried when they played it on Letterman back in 2003 even though the song sucked. But I assure you, I love this song and every Phish song, even Loving Cup, which is one of their best compositions.
Trey’s senior thesis was broken out with a version of Lizards that was like all the others, but different, and better. Then they busted out Reba, which they played the tits off of. That’s right, tits. It’s a double pun because they played it really well, hence, the tits came off and Reba is a woman’s name so she would presumably have tits. They came off is what I’m trying to tell you. They should bag it and tag it. LOL. See what I did there? I am a comedian!
The flawless segueing into Julius wasn’t flawless, but remember, I have to keep fluffing the band so just take my word for it. It was FUCKING FLAWLESS! Julius reminded me of a song by that band that sings Legs, but I can’t tell too much about that because I don’t listen to that kind of shit. Unless it turns out Trey was influenced by them. In that case I’ll download and listen to the entire discography in a matter of hours just to get deeper into Trey’s mind. I’m thinking of dying my hair red by the way. What do you think? Yeah?! I think it would look cool too!
46 days was busted out, even though a bust out technically is a way to describe a rare song that is played once in a blue moon. But I’ll stick with that because it came out of nowhere as I expected something else more obscure which would be every song. But then, the jam transformed into this improvisational thing that was like the best part of the show. It was pseudo David Byrne meets Miles Davis meets Zachary Taylor meets Moby Grape. Yes, it was that awesome! Don’t know who some of those musicians/former presidents are? You should continue reading what I write, because it will educate you all about how Phish is flawless and just so fucking awesome. I am crying because I can’t tell you enough how flawless they are. They’re just perfect since they came back, that’s all I’m saying. Then they segued into Free which was very funky with Gordo plucking the bass strings really loudly. I like this enough to say it was ‘phunky’, even though you may be irked by the use of the letters ‘ph’.
After Free, there was much talk on stage and then YEM. This was cool too. I would write more about how the show ended on a high note with a sick vocal jam, but my ‘Thesaurus for Phish Fans Reviewing Shows’ has been worn down and I don’t know what else to say. YEM was cool? No, that’s not it. Ground-breaking? Well, not really…. maybe it was mesmerizing? YES! THIS YEM was MESMERIZING! The energy! The trampolines! The vocal jam! God, I love this band. I need to rub one out now.
The encore was Character Zero which has gone back to being more than what it was in 2000 – the staple of every other show. Now that it’s back to being an every third show song, I find that this version was more amazing than 3 nights ago and probably cant be topped. That is, until the next time they play it.
This cannot possibly get better! Yes it can! More shows! All shows will be better than the last!
We can only assume that Phish is going to continue to get better and better and soon Trey will ascend to heaven and be seated at the right hand of Jerry. But until that happens, I’ll be fluffing the shit out of the band in the hopes that the journalists who cover Phish will meet me halfway and improve their biased reviews. I mean, seriously, don’t they realize how amazing Phish is? You’d think we were all pot smoking hippies or something.