On June 18th, 2010 a crowd of us woke up and stretched ourselves awake from various beds, couches and inflatable mattresses at our friend’s house in the ‘burbs of Hartford, Connecticut. It was a beautiful day so we spent it lounging around their lovely backyard pool with drinks and guitars working up an appetite for the epic barbecue that was promised and delivered.

Come showtime we cracked beers for the ride (open liquor laws in Hartford are so very civilized) and got to the venue. I believe our hosts once again showed off their in-your-face stealth style of smuggling liquor into the show, an admirable display that has one brother lob a two-liter bottle to the other brother once the latter has cleared security. It’s an over-the-shoulder football catch that invariably arouses cheers from the crowd lined up to get in that in turn create confused looks on the faces of security, so busy searching bags and purses that they miss the whole maneuver.

It’s beautiful, victimless anarchy and just a joy to behold.

M’lady and I were in the pavilion for the show – which didn’t really matter because it wasn’t raining – but it was nice to be fairly close and central. The show was great from the get-go with a particularly fun three-song second set punch in the form of Tweezer/Theme From The Bottom/Harry Hood, a musical triumvirate of personal favourites.

Speaking of favourites, given the haphazard nature of a Phish non-setlist set it’s very tempting to turn to the person next to you and make a guess at to what the next song might be. Anytime I hear even the slightest musical tweak, a particular chord or snare hit, or just get the same gut feeling that helps me pick numbers when I play roulette I turn to m’lady and confidently tell her what song is coming next.

Of course I’m usually wrong. It’s not like I’m some sort of gambling millionaire or anything.

Because of this, and out of an abundance of sympathetic empathy to a habit that must get quite annoying I resist stating these guesses out loud whenever I can, which I’m sure isn’t often enough.

Now, when you get to the encore of a show (like this one) where the band has played Tweezer but they haven’t yet played the nearly-ubiquitous follow-up Tweezer Reprise (like this show) there’s certainly no cache in turning to your lady and calling for a Reprise. To do so would be the newbiest newb move ever; in this situation everybody knows the reprise is coming.

And come it did, right after Sleeping Monkey.

However, on very rare occasions the band forgets to bookend Tweezer with Tweezer Reprise, and as they were finishing up it occurred to me this had been the case the last time they played Tweezer, just a few shows before.

And so just as the band was going into the riff that wraps up the song and bid us all goodnight I had a thought. It was an exciting thought and it came like a flash. It went like this: “Phish should play the reprise twice in a row to make up for skipping it at the Hershey show!”

Of course the notion was silly and to my eternal lot-cred detriment I somehow resisted stating my prediction out loud. And then just a few seconds later, wouldn’t you know it, Trey said this:

“You know what? We’re all having such a great time and we’ve only got a couple of minutes before they kick us off the stage, and we played, uh, Tweezer at Hershey Park where we never did Tweezer Reprise so we’re going to play it again! This is for Hershey Park!”

Then Trey tore into the riff to restart the song and the crowd went bananas. Especially me.

“I called it in my head!” I screamed with delight, jumping up and down.

But really, could a claim be much feebler? “I knew they were gonna do that…” Harumph. My one chance to be a Phish genius, blown by a courtesy.

Me and my little mouth.

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