i had caught a couple of nights of hampton, but for many Phans, this was their first show back since the hiatus. needless to say, the crowd was buck wild.

The sloth really got the place jumping. great opener! dog stole things was solid, but the early show piper gave them a chance to cut loose. one of my buddies was bummed to have the weekapaugh'less mike's groove last night, so he got what he wanted out of piper. it was a very good seque and a very rocking weekapaugh,especially for being the 4th song in the show. dirt was a nice slow down tune before driving into scent of a mule. this was big on my list of songs that i wanted to hear this weekend, and they played a good solid version here. it's no alpine '97 or any number of your wilder mules, but it's a good solid first set version. we finally got our first dip into the "new stuff" with walls of the cave. this was a pretty solid version. not my favorite song, but they tacked a nifty little jam on the end to make it worth the while. the set sort of petered out from there.

now, like almost everyone else, i did not think that phish 2.0 ever reached anything near the peaks they were hitting prehiatus, especially 95-98, but one song that i thought they played better in 03-04 than any other era was tube. I saw this version and the deer creek 04, and they were both killer. the deer creek one was tighter than this one, but this was a good intro to the posthiatus tube. gordon and fishman bumped out the funk with some nice playing by page and trey before bringing back to blues town before cracking back into tube. good version. as mentioned, not as good as deercreek 04, but a good listen all the same. then came my personal favorite phish tune, bathtub gin! this one was a doozy, and it ranks up there with the best. they covered a lot of ground here. they moved from the bathtub theme to rock to funk to ambience and they moved between these genres for 30 minutes. this is the best post hiatus version but i'll still take worcester 95, murat 93, and winstom salem 97 over this one. i saw friday at hampton and hated it...this one did nothing to change my mind but after a killer 30 minute gin, who's complaining?! they did work friday into bowie quite nicely. the bowie did not cover as much ground as the gin, but it was still a nice explorative version. as i have mentioned in other reviews, i absolutely dispice but, and in this spot, it just killed me. i figured they would not close with but, but alas, they did.... big time bummer. suzy ended this show and run appropriately.

overall:
the fist half of the first set is excellent, and the same can be said for the 2nd set. man, that bug in the 2nd set just kills me...

highlights:
1
the sloth, piper>weekapaugh, scent of a mule
2
tube, bathtub gin