I'm just so mad at myself for missing this tiny show at the 'Sco, which is just a room in the basement of the student union. This was the second semester of my freshman year in college, and I was a budding little deadhead (I had seen two whole Dead shows!), so I'm sure a lot of my friends were talking about this band. I'm sure it got recommended to me. What was I doing? There were surely no more than 50 people in attendance, and I probably could have had a beer with the band after the show. I went to tons of dance nights at the 'Sco. I probably had practice this night with my a cappella group, the Obertones. I was a bass voice. Or maybe I had rehearsal for some theater piece. I was a theater major. But man, I could have seen this, and seen the band a full 4 1/2 years earlier than I did.

I just gave the tape a listen, and I'm amazed at how good the band was already at this point. A lot of these songs really groove. The jams are proto-Phish, of course, a lot of mayhem. And some things are very different, like this early version of Cavern with alternate lyrics. I just know I would have totally latched onto this band already.

After this I transferred to UC Santa Cruz, close to home for me, where I missed the band again several times. I finally gave them a shot in December of 1994 when I moved to LA. Now you know.

May 1990 is going to feel like such a grand reward with the band's return to the east coast and hopefully the necessity to crank the creativity knob in front of familiar audiences. April 1990 in Colorado/various midwest venues is--there's no better way to say it--a total slog. Same songs night in and night out, little to no exploration, poor audio quality, disinterested audience.

It would be interesting to peek into the minds of the band members at this point in Phishistory. They might collectively view this period as a relative success, a time when Phish took a couple of brief cross country trips, making several stops along the way, exposing new people to this new music. They were probably very excited. Unfortunately, time has not been kind to the repetitive nature of these April 1990 tapes at all, and listening to all of them on my Chronological Phish Quest has quickly become an exercise in redundancy. I can only hope that this changes soon.

As for the show itself, it's fine. Like nearly every show played in Colorado, there are few standout moments, and is mostly just a good band playing good music. Luckily for all of us phans, Phish eventually turned out to be the best band playing the best music! There is a nice chaotic Antelope that may be worth a listen, though.

2.5/5 stars.

There seems to be a lot of the room mixed into this SBD source. Is it possible this is a matrix recording? I enjoyed this source even though there’s a handful of cassette generations in it’s lineage.

Possum gets things cooking’ right out of the gate. Decent YEM. I Didn’t Know features Fryer Tuck’s alter ego, Henrietta on vac. The quality improves midway through I Didn’t Know. Strong Antelope. Lawn Boy provides a cool down before heading to set break.

Nice How High the Moon set opener. The quality switches a bit during Oh Kee Pa. It almost sounds like Dolby B was turned off. There’s more high end but also more cassette hiss. A high energy Mike’s Groove closes out the set. There’s some more shifting in quality during Hydrogen and Groove. Trey teases I Know a Little before the Highway to Hell encore. That would’ve been a better choice! Definitely a raucous crowd in Ohio!

Not a whole lot to get excited about here, IMO. The Esther has some major problems, and the Gin is a typical early version wonk fest. The Suzy is OK, but the energy seems to get suddenly sapped away, and the rest of the show doesn't have much spark to it. Two stars.