this was the big u.s. summer tour closer. phish had really been playing well the last 3 nights, so this deer creek crowd was really expecting the best. unfortunately, and some disagree with me, but this was one of the worst phish shows i have ever seen.

they kicked things off with farmhouse, which i thought to be a very poor opening choice. i was hoping they would come out firey...not so much. gbott was very overplayed on this tour,so i figured we'd be seeing that at the creek in one of the two nights. this song was ruined for me after seeing the bad ass dobro infused version in nashville. none of the other versions i heard could even come close. after they cranked up vultures, i thought this set would start to turn a corner, but as soon as they wrapped that up they dipped into sleep. this one is a snoozer. my hopes rose again with gumbo, where they explored some nice funk grooves that eventually found there way into a solid nicu. beauty of my dreams kept the energy going. bathtub gin got me fired up, but once it got going it did not really do too much. they dipped back into snooz'ville with mtnsi n the mist. axilla kept the roller coaster set going before closing out a some what disjointed stash that, like gin, tried to go somewhere but it never quite made it.

there have been many times i've seen phish play an uneven 1st set and rally back to kill the second. this was not one of those nights. wolfman's did start things off really well. they dug into some explosive funk grooves before winding around into piper. this piper also had some nice exploration. i really thought this show had turned around, but some problems started to arise during theme. it sounded like gordon got a little lost but the theme jam seemed a little muddled. after an odd little feed back jam led into down with disease, gordon and fishman's timing continued to be off. trey shot gordon a mean shitty grin as he sang the line in dwd about "always loosing time." you could feel the inner band tension. this jam had some interesting points, but all in all, it lacked focus and direction. finally they found their way into 2001 but all of a sudden gordon just starts playing soa melt. i don't know if gordon ate some mushrooms before this show or what, but this was not good. the notes below the set list describe the 2001 as a tease and say mike "redirected" the band, but that is not wholly accurate. they were playing 2001 and gordon just boned it. this is the only show where i was not wowed by gordo's playing, but something was up on this night. like the previous songs, the melt never really took flight, and the summer tour was coming to a close.

enc:

woodstock: this was a nice little moment to a not so hot show. i hadn't really been paying attention to the woodstock happenings since i was catching the end of phish tour, but all hell had broken loose. despite a not so hot phish show, it was still better than being anywhere else.

julius: not my favorite, song.... weak way to end the tour.

overall:
set 1: gumbo>nicu
set 2: wolfman's piper