Love the show but Jeremy's attempt to declare a narrative of phish history falls flat even though I respect his passion and his effort. I'm glad he got this review and therefore had no choice but to throw the chip off his shoulders, but Niss1 hits the historical mark in far fewer words.

"While the above description is more or less a mainstream summary of what many long-time fans consider to be the true story of 3.0." NO that has not been conceded. Lots of years and tours took a few weeks of inconsistency before hitting late season peaks and for some reason 3.0 was held to a higher standard. Maybe this is the reason: "But the sense that each tour was building upon the previous one to sketch out an ever-dynamic history was sadly missing, for many of us." Say what? How did Summer 96 build upon anything? How did 2000 build on 1999 build upon 1998? It didn't. It sounds like the author had put the band on a pedestal when he was younger and infatuated and let that color his experience more recently.

In my view the band has been playing a long game these past few years. By deliberately erring on the side of ending a passage that wasn't clicking, we got ripcords, by Fish as well as Trey, so weak shows stood out more obviously than shows with long periods of directionless, lower-tempo stoner music, but the weaker shows were always part of the mix, questionable historiography notwithstanding. This conservative bent held the rest of the band more hostage to an off night by Trey. But it also purged the band of lazy habits and forced them to listen to each in new ways, and led to a more uptempo Mike-centered jam platform. I welcome the return of silly phish and think it bodes well for their future, and July 2014 is more consistent than some recent early summer swings and that's nice for the east coast, but it is not a seminal moment in phish history. There will be another epic show or 3 or 5 this year, with or without segues, and the turning point within 3.0, if there was one, happened a while ago... Utica? 8.5.11? 8.19.12?

There will also be disappointing shows here and there. This proves nothing. This was a great 2 set show after a short run of meh to good, strong but not epic ones, and it showed more personality than most phish shows from most years, and it deserves this review, the meat of which is well-done. But the historical narrative it is being shoehorned into is, in the opinion of this history teacher, garbage.

Fukuyama, btw, has never lived down the title of his essay and grew frustrated with ideologues using it as part of their American triumphant narrative, claiming that his conclusions were overstated by others. Perhaps he himself was guilty of overstating matters at the turn of the Cold War?