The opener of Festival 8, Party Time, was a fitting song for the mentality of throwing a giant party and having a great time. This performance was the second time this Fishman-penned tune had been played. The psychedelic Chalkdust that followed was a great moment of improvisation with the fact that it was a departure from the typical bluesy Chalkdust jam. After the funk of Moma Dance and the island-flavor of NICU, Trey led the band through a great jam of Stealing Time From the Faulty Plan; one of the best performances of this song during the whole 09 tour. The highlight of set one, Stash, featured a beautiful, major-key jam that included an L.A. Woman tease. I Didn't Know featured Trey announcing that this would be the first time that Fish would blow and suck on the vacuum at the same time. After standard versions of Poor Heart, Cavern, and the Page-penned Beauty of a Broken Heart, Phish jammed out Ocelot for a while and played a gorgeous version of Time Turns Elastic to end the set.
To begin the second set, Phish played a decent Punch followed by an awesome Down With Disease that rivaled the DWD from seven months earlier at Hampton. A segue from Prince Caspian into an incredibly spacy and psychedelic Wolfman's (featuring a Light jam), led into the best Piper of 2009. The segue into Joy, a song that has grown on me a lot since the release of the album, was a brilliant moment of the second set. During the high-hat tinkling of David Bowie, Trey said that this was a hint of the Halloween album that would be played the next night. After a rocking Bowie jam, a beautiful Harry Hood flowed into a set-closing Golgi Apparatus. A standard Character Zero ended the wonderful first show of Festival 8.
Highlights: Party Time, Chalkdust Torture, Stealing Time, Stash, Ocelot, Down with Disease, Wolfman's, Piper, David Bowie