I snuck into the official show discussion thread last night, like Locust the Lurker, just as they dropped into Tweezer and was immediately torn between grateful observer and FOMO cynic. The $h!tty side of me thinking don't let this be great...my shoulder devil making stabbing motions at my soul. I mean it's a Tuesday show, how are they not gonna go deep...why didn't they go this way last Tuesday? "Woe is me" type BS...and if you weren't there you can't deny some of these thoughts went through your head as well. Anyway, I digress.

This morning, after listening to set one, I breathed in INNULTB (awkward acronym) and used the 40 minutes of Tweezer as my meditation music, sitting eyes closed, trying just to observe. The 40 minutes screamed by and I made some very clear (to me) observations: First, I completely forgot about any first set highlights, like completely erased. Second, it was as good as any 40 minute jam this band has played. Next, while the risks to playing an extended 30+ minute jam might be that it doesn't translate, gets boring, plan sucks; there are certain musical upsides that can only come from an uninterrupted improvisation of that length (think FLOW-STATE). I know there is all this talk of micro-jams, the ability to express distinct musical themes in a condensed format, and they certainly have merit. BUT, like a long distance runner, you only truly learn about what you are made of once you pass that certain threshold.

This jam had, in my opinion, four distinct themes. Building, Meandering, Letting Go, and Elysium:
1) The Build contained the optimism that most Phish jams project in the early minutes. There was patience, musical conversation, and it felt like it had a determined path, or at least focus.

2) The Meandering section is where many jams, I think, abort and/or quickly turn major key bliss-mode for the bail out. What's happening when they meander sets the tone for the remainder of this jam and precisely what happened here. Now that the familiar ground has passed, they are left searching for the next musical thought and theme and have to pass through a few to find what feels right and therefore becomes prime rip cord territory.

3) But if they settle into this No Man's Land, they have the opportunity to reach the Letting Go. This is the Phish that I love. Long sonic passages of dissonance with discordant musical opinions happening that swell up and join forces to realize they are actually all super locked in. Most jams don't make it this far, in my opinion, or at least they only flirt with this before cutting back to familiar territory, for Terra-Firma. Great deliberate patience and focus happens here. From the darkness there are brief shafts of light but the band remains in this Letting Go because there is no rush. The band stops to listen a little more. Ideas start to congeal from the primordial ooze to form the basic building blocks of the next segment, the foundation needed for them to land after they blast off to the stratosphere.

4) Then its Elysium. This is not your typical major key cop out, this is a slow and deliberate build and the crowd senses this and responds immediately. The confidence level is apparent at this point and the HOSE is in full effect. The shuttle launch commences at 32:30 and they are soaring for the stars.

My only critique is that with all that patience they exuded, they could have, first, deconstructed back into the seminal licks of Tweezer proper versus the herky-jerky landing and/or gone full Tweezer deconstruction mode once they shifted back into the closing coda to close the song out.

Anyway, I love that we have this forum to share and that is how I saw it and I am probably wrong cause I SUCK AT PHISH!