Wonderful!
5
By marobbins5
This was an excellent Phish show, not that there is such a thing as a bad one, but this really covers all the bases as far as mixing in the obscure jams with the old standards. Honestly, out of all the Phish I've heard, this is right there at the top as far as live shows go. I know 15$ is a lot of money for a single album, but this is really more a piece of history than just a mere album. This show (except for the bonus tracks, which were recorded two days later) was recorded on June 22, 1994. Friends, you don't get much more smack-dab in the middle of the golden era of Phish, and I know you can argue the merits of late 90s versus early 90s, but personally I think this was very near to being a plateau in their career, and this show in particular really is the epitome of a group at the very height of it's career, on top of it's game. I hate to disappoint the longtime PhishHeads reading this, but they aren't going to put out another Pictures of Nectar or Live in Brooklyn. Really, as great as it is that they are touring again and releasing a new album, I think that when they broke up in 2004 and didn't get back together for almost five full years, it killed 95% of the momentum they had built up in the 90s and early 2000s. Will they still headline major shows/festivals? Of course. Will they still make great studio and live albums? Probably. Will they ever match what they had going for them before the breakup? I don't think they will, and you can look at this two ways: You can cry for what you lost, or you can be grateful it happened in the first place. This album is a perfect audio image of when it was happening full-throttle, 100%, all the way.
