Welp, its the weekend. So that means onwards with 2021!!!
The next show is 8/27/21 George, WA
Very odd-looking setlist. Gotta be honest, on paper, this does not look
exciting to me at all. This looks like one of those "I enjoy these
songs, but really do not want them all in the same set together" kind of
shows....
Let's let the music speak for itself, shall we? 
8/27/21 George
Set 1
Torn and Frayed - Who saw this coming?!?!?! Why did they randomly
bust this out?! Sounds excellent and well rehearsed!! I'm all down for
this making semi-regular appearances! Anyone know if there's a story
behind this ultra-random return on this night? Very nice version that
gets the show opened on a relaxed and feel-good note. Terrific soloing
from Trey as well!!! Great start to the show!
No Men In No Man's Land - Immediately, you can feel this show is
gonna have a wonderfully energetic-yet-relaxed vibe about it. It was
palpable from the moment Torn and Frayed started and continues here.
Things are feeling so good, if you will. Like when you sink into a hot bubble bath after a hard day at work and just go "Aw yea...that's the ticket!", ya know what I mean?
Right at 3 minutes the jam begins with Trey doing more of that kickass
"watery delay" stuff he has come to rely on this summer. At the end of
the day, there isn't much to say (in a good way). This is an absolutely
rousing Type I NMiNM'sL that ticks all the boxes you need ticked. Great
little version!
Leaves - FIRST VERSION SINCE 2017!!!! Thank the lord this
song was not lost to time. Hands down one of the absolute best Phish
ballads ever, imo. Can't believe it was shelved completely for 4 years!
What the hell?!?!? Surely most of the crowd was confused on this night,
but fear not - this is excellent. It sounds absolutely rehearsed and the guys NAIL the interwoven vocal parts. This sounds like something special for sure. THIS IS FRIGGIN FANTASTIC! WHERE DID THIS GO AND WHY DID IT RANDOMLY REAPPEAR?!?! ALL HAIL THE GLORIOUS RETURN OF LEAVES!!!!!
Split Open and Melt - Very funny false-start. Fishman starts the beat
than stops - "I thought you said Melt". Trey: "You can't just stop!". 
14 minutes on this sucker. The Melt-aissance continues! The jam starts
very chill. Trey is playing with his backwards delay and eventually sets
a loop that he uses to play on top if. His playing is very quiet and
almost not-there. The other guys are slowly building the intensity
behind him, but it's such a slow burn that you almost go "is anything
happenning?". Around 7 minutes, on the verge of faltering, Fishman moves
the jam ahead by switching up his drumming, forcing the others to
adapt. Trey still has a loop going and begins to slowly play around with
his Whammy and other toys. Page is keeping it in the box on the keys,
not daring to unleash any synths yet. Up to 8 minutes and this
sucker ain't doing a whole lot, BUT, it is definitely building. Just
slowly. Like, really slowly. Like, 'IT' Festival 2003 Chalkdust slowly. At
8:45 it sounds like Trey "accidentally" hits a note/passage that leads
the jam into a more blissful area. Page's synths have finally come out
to play. This is very interesting. I hesitate to say "Good", but
it's....it's going on. Finally around 10 minutes the jam begins to
really take flight. Still heading into a feel-good bliss fest. Trey
ain't doing much - just mindlessly picking out melodic noodles. The jam
ALMOST picks up steam in it's final moment, but by then it's too
late.....I refuse to highlight this. This was not good. Not awful, but definitely not good.
A for effort I guess, but I'm calling that Melt a failure. Sure it
was better than the Charleston 2019 version (hell, anything is!), but
this did so little in it's run time....and that's ok, less can be more,
but it seriously took them upwards of 12 minutes or so for anything of
note to start happenning.
Tube - Come to save our asses after that botched experiment we called
Melt. A pretty hot Type I reading, but not worth highlight as nothing
really happens yet again. Basically, Trey steps on his porno wah and
proceeds to vamp it out for 6 minutes.
I Been Around - "Page?! Where have you been all week?!" Seventh-ever
performance of this song. I Been Around is I Been Around. Fits very
nicely with the fun/relaxed mood of the set and the placement was
perfect as well. Great stuff!
Ha Ha Ha - FIRST VERSION SINCE BAKER'S DOZEN. And of course, because I Been Around is a joke song, they follow it up with, naturally, Ha Ha Ha. 
Mull - The Mike Gordon song. Great to hear! "COULD YOU PASS ME A TACO?!". Sounds GREAT tonight!!! Definitely rehearsed and tight. And it didn't drag!!!! Thank you Trey for not sleeping on this one!!! Play
this more! This is great! Mike absolutely funks it the hell up tonight.
Trey's soloing consists of lots of chord stabs and scratches, porno
wah, etc etc. Very "textural" soloing. Page eventually gets some synth
action going. All in all, this sucker got COOKING!!!! This sounded like something straight out of 1997 by the end, Jimi Hendrix guitar trilling and all!!!! SICK!
No, seriously, go check out Mull. Picture something halfway between a Tube and a Mike's Song. Great stuff!
Shade - Busting out the big-gun ballads tonight I see! Very nice but not much to make it standout tonight.
Alaska - Any other night I'd be absolutely moaning about Alaska coming up the rear in a set like this. But it absolutely FITS the vibe to a T and also somehow worked coming out of Shade!!! How?! A strong Type I reading (as all are, pretty much), that gets up to nine minutes!! Terrific Page piano fills and soloing!!! Great version!!! Totally fits this set! Killer slow-burn, down home, nasty wah solo from Trey. For real - it lasts several glorious minutes. This Alaska is swampy and groovy and fun as hell!!!!!
Golgi Apparatus - And with the arrival of Golgi you know the set is
coming to a close. A sloppy-if-fun version, nothing special in the
slightest and you've heard much better versions played elsewhere.
All in all - color me shocked!! No, this isn't some massive
jam-fest set, and the Melt is an utter disgrace, but on the whole, this
set was WAY more fun and WAY more enjoyable than it had any right to
be!!! The ultra-relaxed vibe continues throughout from start to finish
and, with the help of great set flow (as well as some very CHOICE set
picks!), it remains above the sleepy doldrums of the last couple shows
from the first leg of Summer 2021. Not a classic set, and it does have
its issues, but a swell time was had by all - of that I am sure!!! Great
stuff!!
Set 2
Sigma Oasis - Absolutely perfect and inspired, A+ Type I reading of the song.
>What's the Use - THAT SEGUE!!! THAT WAS INCREDIBLE!!! This
one gets pretty "out there". We all know WTU follows a certain
construction, but at the same time, this is a pretty next-level reading.
Hell, it gets so quiet, you almost think they are doing a silent jam or
something!!! This version is incredibly delicate. Like, can-they-play-this-any-softer levels of delicate. Insanely good version of WTU. 
>Blaze On - 11 minutes, this one kicks all kinds of tail. It
goes Type 1.5, if you will. The Robo Honker Goose-tronic Deluxe comes
out to play. Awesome version! It ends up in Ambient Bliss Land before
being 86'd. Really unfortunate that it had to end! To be fair though,
the jam reached a perfect conclusion/transition point, so....
>Lifeboy - A+ set call, Trey! Oh man, that segue was some next-level stuff!!! SEVENTH TIME PLAYED IN 3.0!!! I swear it doesnt seem like THAT big of a rarity, but....I guess it is!!?? Terrific reading!!!
Camel Walk - The infamous 17-minute version!!!! Right off the friggin bat, even before the first lyrics, you know this is gonna be different. The guys lay into the funk HARD,
Trey kicks on his distortion and it's a little heavy! They waste no
time getting down and dirty. This being Camel Walk, of course they take
their sweet time, just laying deep into the groove. By 8 minutes or so
though, things are slowly starting to evolve.....if you
will. Gordo has his synth-bass sound going, Page is tossing in his own
synths in the back...Trey is experimenting with cool and tasteful use of
the "stuttering delay" effect. Somewhere around the 9 minute mark,
Mike begins a descending bass pattern. Trey latches on to this and the
whole band is now playing a new "theme"!!!! INCREDIBLY COOL!!! Awesome
sparkling synths in the background that I haven't heard before coupled
with the pulsing-in-and-out THX Synth blasts. The whole band is still
doing this descending motif, jamming the F out of it. This sounds like something from a 1990s jam!!! By
11 minutes, Mike is still keeping it going, but the jam turns another
corner into a budding upbeat bliss area. Fishman begins a rapid-fire
drum pattern and Trey starts squealing around on the guitar, getting
nasty. TREY then starts repeating the pattern again and it seems like it
won't go away!
By 14 minutes, the wacky synth-funk has all but gone away and Trey is
now slowly doing melodic solos up and down the fretboard. Around 14:30 it sounds like he is doing an uptempo playthrough of the Lifeboy theme!!!! And from 15 minutes onwards we are into "standard" upbeat, feel-good, blissville. But
this was so NATURAL that you can't complain! This is a phenomenal
jam!!! X FACTOR!!!! MUST HEAR! MUST HEAR!! Ok, forget the Atlantic City
Ghost (don't really - it's amazing), but THIS was the best jam of the
summer since the 8/6 Blaze On and Simple!!!!!
>Chalkdust Torture - YO! THAT SEGUE! LETS FRIGGIN GO!!!!!!!!!! Killer
choice to keep us going after that "did that really just happen?!"
Camel Walk!!!! Wanna know the best part? It's a jammed out, 13 minute
beast. Right at 4:45, the jam begins and IMMEDIATELY we
are into different waters. From the get go, it sounds like the guys all
hit a "wrong" passage TOGETHER which leads to a brief moment of
weirdness that is very cool. This causes the jam to correct itself and
maintain the Chalkdust tempo, but also go into a calmer, more laid-back
groove style! Think laid-back, lounge-chair, funking it up Chalkdust! THIS IS FREAKING COOL!!!!! Around
8 minutes Trey starts a descending motif and the band latches on. The
jam is Type II "Quiet Bliss" at this point. Extremely unique - I've
never heard another Chalkdust like this!!! THE ANTI-RAGER! THIS IS INCREDIBLE!!! By
9 minutes, the synthesizers begin their approach. Trey and Mike are
soloing together. Fishman introduces a new tom-tom pattern giving this a
kind of jungly, tribal feel. The jam goes on a for a few more minutes
in this manner, eventually reaching a natural conclusion point for Trey
to lead us into....
>Slave to the Traffic Light - Nothing to say. Great version!
Drift While You're Sleeping - I know people are gonna groan about this as the encore, but c'mon. On a chill-ass, feel-good night like this, this is the PERFECT song to sum up the show as an experience. Great version.
All in all...WOW!!! This show as a whole was definitely the best
COMPLETE show experience in, probably, 5 or 6 shows. The guys gave us a
wonderfully relaxed and FEEL GOOD show. Nothing but "ah, this is nice!"
vibes and smiles from start to finish. It was NOT "sleepy". It's hard to
explain - but when you listen there is a clear difference between
something like this and, say, Atlantic City #1, etc
I will die on the hill that the Melt tonight is an abomination - that
was not good. Period. End of story. You've already seen my thoughts on
set 1, and well, set 2 just took it to the next level. The ENTIRE second
set was PERFECTION!!! Sigma>WTU>Blaze On>Lifeboy were all
terrific and felt like a primer fro the Main Course. That, of course,
being the unbelievable Camel Walk>CHILLDUST>Slave sequence.
Do NOT play this if you hoping for a 1995 bang-your-head-til-blood-comes-out-of-your-ears experience. This is NOT that show.
Actually, this show reminded me a bit of Toronto 2019, another "chillfest" that doesn't get it's due.
The 3.5 rating on this show on .NET is absolutely wrong - this was a strong, say, 4.0 or so, at least.
Camel Walk>Chalkdust was a top 6 or 7 jam of the year so far. They
legitimately hit that magic vein they tapped early in the summer then
lost as it went on.
I could go on for an hour about this show - classic? Perhaps not, but underrated? 1000 percent!!!!!! 
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