2025-04-22 San Francisco, CA

 4 22 25 San Francisco

Set 1

Surprisingly underwhelming start to the show with below average readings of Buried Alive and Axilla. Decent energy but Trey is Mr. Sticky Fingers tonight and his playing is decidedly uninspired. Sloppiness abound.

The song selections do give us some good momentum though. A Mikes Groove in slot 3 is a great choice. Unfortunately again, a pretty loust overall MG. Wasnt Trey having tech issues and Mike sick this night?? That explains it all

Mike itself is flubby but absolutely rages energy wise. Shame that Trey's soloing is so unimpressive aside from one mega sustained note.

After a weak Hydro comes the now infamous slow Weekapaug. It actually sounds pretty decent but isnt anything to write home about.

The first truly good piece of the night is My Soul. Typical version and nothing special, its at least "average excellent" with loads of fire.

Following that is a 20 minute Halley! The intro of Halley is atrocious!!! Trey sounds like he's dying or something. Thank God the jam is fantastic. Definitely some X Factor, all the way until 14 minutes it explores the upper reaches of heaven, just SOARING non stop forever. Its pretty incredible. Then it shifts dark into an evil robo kind of stomp jam for a long while before GORDO reintroduces the song and they close. Definitely must hear - the ending is premature but this is essential regardless.

Just as essential is the following Roggae. Reaching 11 minutes, this one is absolutely mind blowing. Around 5 minutes the song outta nowhere morphs full blown into fantastic dark type 2 jamming. They explore the crazy darkness for a long time before melting back into the light. They peak the ever loving CRAP outta this forever! THIS JS THE GREATEST ROGGAE IVE EVER HEARD AND ITS NOT EVEN CLOSE! HOLY MOTHER OF X FACTOR ICCULUS!!!

Maze comes next and keeps the good times going excellently. Nothing special enough to call must hear, but it 10,000% delivers. As hot and feisty as the hottest Maze's of recent times. A+ reading - it BLAZES!!

This convoluted set concludes with a 14 minute Melt. The jam is interesting in that they spend a long time in major key territory. Its strange and Melty and type 2, but its "light" instead of "dark". Very cool. Around 10 minutes, robo FX squealing away, it begins toying with darkness, straddling the line. This Melt is a MESS!!! A ridiculous, psychedelic, swirling vortex MESS in the best way!!! A modern Melt is a modern Melt but id probably call this must hear.


All in all, this was one of the jankiest sets Ive ever heard. Again, IIRC, most of the issues are from outside forces so it earns major forgiveness.

Halley and Roggae are must hear, Melt probably is and Maze is killer. Basically, pretend the set began with Halley as its all primo Phish from there. 

 

Set 2

The 2nd half of the show opens with a monstrous nearly 22 minute Carini! Hot damn, son! Unfortunately, this is another extremely underwhelming and undercooked jam. The song sounds great but the jam begins in upbeat melodic bliss rock zone and stays there all the way to the 12 minute mark! And its boring, uninspired, downright uneventful playing at that. Ugh. From there, it basically spends 9 minutes doing a standard type 1 rock jam that doesnt really do much of anything. This Carini plays like an 8 minute type 1 version stretched out to 22 minutes. Yea, Im not a fan. At all. This kinda sucked.

Thankfully we get a 15-minute No Men to pick us right back up. No Men rages hard, spending it's time in dark and synthy type 1.5 fire heat. A heater, its definitely must hear. Definitely some X Factor going on. Its SICK!

EVEN BETTER, IT SEGUES OUT OF NOWHERE INTO A FREAKING 23 MINUTE RUBY WAVES!!! And holy mother of Satan what a Ruby!!!!! Top three of all time, Mexico 2024 tier version from outer space!!! The song begins with the jam immediately going into a psychedelic yet majestic area with Trey slowly building a beautiful soundscape with delays and loopers. Type 2 right off the bat! This section is awesome and very unique. Going until the 6 minute mark where they begin to toy back and forth with going dark. Extremely slowly they mutate the jam flawlessly into darker Waters over the course of multiple minutes. Absolutely NUTS, they explore the oute reaches of the cosmos spectacularly all the way until the 12 minute mark. Things slow down and begin to get much more melodic and majestic, though still absolutely OUT THERE. This jam is MAGICAL!! This reminds me of the Mex24 WOPE. Ridiculous aquatic landscape building with all kinds of bubbly synths and what not, the jam slowly gains ahead of steam after a few minutes and then spends the final eight or nine minutes of the jam slow building into the biggest most ridiculous peak hose explosion maybe in the entire history of the band. Yes I just said all of that this jam is one of the all-time greats of any era of any period of any year of the band. No exaggeration this might be a genuine contender for number one greatest Ruby of all time right now even against Alpine 2019 or MSG 2024.

That was one of the most naturally organic, flowing, slow building, perfectly executed, perfectly measured jams ever in the existence of the universe.

No possible phone review can accurately depict the ridiculous magic of this unbelievable jam. I will definitely have to do a blow by blow review of the song itself. 

So after that universe destroying Ruby, we get a perfectly placed Waste, and boy does it HIT hard tonight, carrying some definite emotional heft as the comedown after that all timer jam. Excellent version, it ends wity a sustained note, segueing out of thin air into Whats the Use!!! Nobody in the universe saw that coming. And my god did it work. WTU is all kinds of extra tonight and the Waste>WTU pair is a total must hear.

On a shocking note, the set proper concludes with a FIREBALL type 1 Disease!! They friggin BURN IT DOWN!! What a FRESH placement and this is strong enough for me to call it must hear!!!

As if all that wasnt enough, we get the ultimate encore of Fluffhead. 99 percet perfect aside from about 10 seconds in one part, its a spectacular raise your glasses affair, sending us out in grand fashion. Not a must hear version but still totally excellent reading that brings down the house.

All in all...man, 2025 just keeps upping the damn bar, eh?!?! Set 2 was another all-killer, no filler, basically entirely must hear affair (aside from the incredibly uninspired Carini)

That No Men! That Waste>WTU!! That Disease!!! And that RUBY!!!



Depsite the myriad of "just shut up and stop analyzing things" flaws the show contains, the heights are, again, stratospheric. The 4.3 rating on .NET feels a tad high, but really, the good stuff in this show is just BEYOND.

So, I can dig a 4.2/4.3 rating on this one.