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.