2019-11-30 Providence
Set 1
Turtle In the Clouds - I remember at the time that I did sample
this show due to slow Llama and whatnot and this stuck out as a strong
Turtle. How does it stack up for me now? Well, first off, I love this as
an opener. It's great. The synths sound nice and textured, Fishman
blasts it out in the verses and this thing has awesome energy. They
absolutely nail it - it's tight as heck - and Trey's soloing to close it
out is perfect. Great opener!!!
Punch You in the Eye - Ok, everyone knows this is my favorite Phish
song (definitely the one that converted me!!!) and I'm always extra
picky about them. The tempo sounds good on this - not too sluggish, but
of course not as zippy as I'd prefer. Trey has some flubs in the easy
part of the intro (c'mon, man!) but they get a great groove goin' so
i'll forgive it. Check out Page sprinkling in those synths, ala that
7/23/99 version!!! They milk this intro nicely, finally beginning proper
around 3.30 in. Compositionally Trey plays fine. Occasionally we get a
tiny "squeaky" kind of flub, but once again, I forgive him. This is
pretty much as good as you can expect Punch to be at this point in time,
so I'll totally take it. Sounds practiced!!! And he isn't doing that
"playing too quietly" thing! 
Yay! Great Punch!!!
Llama - Slow Llama!!! Yay!! We all love our red-hot Machine Gun
Trey Llamas, but this arrangement grooves so awesome and is funky as
hell. Also love the Gordo solo. Fantastic. Awesome. ALL HAIL SLOW LLAMA!
Meat - Gets an intro from Trey and some synths from Page to guide
us in! This thing takes the dirty groove of Llama to even deeper
depths. This is all about them accents and the extremely funky bass
effects. 
All hail Cactus!!
The Old Home Place - Is The Old Home Place
Lawn Boy - Is Lawn Boy. Trey keeps introducing the tunes and Page keeps the "THX Movie Intro" synths blaring 
Pretty funny and the crowd absolutely laps it up. GET IT, GORDO!!!
I Didn't Know>Vacuum Solo - Nothing to say. Very funny and talk about a follow up to Lawn Boy, lol.
Maze - The THX intros continue. As they so often are these days,
this Maze is less firey and hot and more jazzy and angular. Things get
quite hairy with Page ripping up the keys! But then Trey comes in all
quietly and guides on down the river. Hard to explain, but its a pretty
great Maze, imo.
Horn - Is Horn
Gotta Jibboo - Very "quiet" sounding, as if the guys are
whispering the song. Very, very chill. And this sums of the vibe of it -
wonderful soloing from Trey in the back end. Pretty strong Jibboo, imo.
Very sweet and smooth as ice. The last few minutes do start to build
some nice heat and we close with a good strong peak. Great Jibboo!
Stash - And the THX just keeps on a-comin'!!! This Stash is
beautiful. It goes Type II bliss hard, man. It's great but pretty much
rides this out to its Plasma-Reprisal-THX conclusion
>Golgi Apparatus - Haven't a heard a good recent one in a long time and this is no exception. STOP LAUGHING AND LEARN YOUR PARTS, TREY!!! ITS NOT FUNNY ANYMORE!
All in all, this set sounds like it was a right party to have attended,
but listening to it it feels overly amusing to the point of distracting
in parts. Surprisingly though it DOES flow very well and nothing sounds
out of place. I would even go so far to say that I thought it was better
than the first set of 11/29, but I personally was waiting for this one
to be over after a certain point. This set gets a "Eh, that was pretty
good"/10 rating from me!
Set 2 -
Bathtub Gin - A great (for 2019) version that makes good use of
it's 18 minute run time going Type II early and leading us all over the
place on a very enjoyable journey. I'm too tired for proper play by
play, but it was excellent and worth your time for sure! Actually, it's
downright fantastic - just gets better the longer it goes! Let me put it
like this, any other night and I'd be going nutso on this
>Alaska - Unexpectedly, it comes to a big close and glides
right on into Alaska. Seems odd to get it in a second set as well. Cool
beans. Great version that is pretty lengthy and winds out pretty
differently than usual....
>What's The Use - OUTTA FRIGGIN NOWHERE! Yea, how the hell did this come out of an ALASKA?! No complaints! This set is awesome so far!! Around 2 minutes in the descend into complete silence. From here we are in the darkest reaches of pure outer space. This
lasts a glorious minute or so. Absolutely beautiful stuff as the guys
slowly re-enter like this is the world's most gentle I Am Hydrogen or
something. This is the type of ambience 1999 dreamt of
I don't know how they pull this stuff out of their hats so friggin'
easily, but gosh darn it this is MUST hear!!!! INCREDIBLE!!!
>Piper - A good old fashioned almost-slow intro on this Piper.
And what a perfect song choice out of WTU!!! 11 minutes of wonderfully
groovy Type II ensue. As with Gin, it covers much ground in its
short-ish run time. Fantastic stuff.
>Golden Age - An ever-so-slight ripcord leads us into GA. Not a
total bust but not the greatest segue either. Takes the band a little
bit to catch onto the groove at the start but a great song choice, I
must say! This one doesn't last long but it does get into some murky,
soupy, ultra-funky Type II grooves like it's Fall '97 for the final few
minutes. Crazy synths and pseudo-ambience!!! If only this sucker was
longer!!! Also, PLASMA REPRIS!
>Harry Hood - Trey gets off to a rough start - the composed
portion isn't the best. But the energy is RED HOT on this version and
they very quickly start heading for some darker and nastier spaces right
off the bat. Trey turns them around though and keeps the energy
building. For minutes on end they are just raging, not peaking, slowly
letting this sucker boil - one note at a time!!! Around 10 minutes they
latch on to each other more substantially and we start heading towards
Peaksville, USA, ala the Great Went Gin. What I mean is, it's like one
massive rage peak that just goes and goes AND FRIGGIN GOES. The
volcano never ERUPTS, but it simmers for ever, teetering right on the
edge of explosion. Around 11 minutes - still ripping it up - they begin
to introduce the "you can feel good" section. This is ensemble playing
of the highest order, truly a group effort and not just a Trey fest.
This is damn magical (or at least as close as 3.0 gets, I think).
Finally at 13 min the vocals begin only for them to immediately peak
this sucker to a close. Hardcore. PLEASE LISTEN TO THIS! THIS WAS INSANE! A++++
Surprisingly the set doesn't end there!!
Big Black Furry Creature From Mars - No, it's not 2003 hot, but c'mon, this is always list-worthy!
>KUNG - STAND UP!!! STAND UP!!! STAND UP!!!! KUNG!! KUNG!!! KUNG!!!!
Wombat - Is Wombat. Is nothing special. But is still great
Possum - Is Possum. Nothing special. Rages hard to close a crazy set!
All in all, most of set 2 was incredible. They really worked it
together like weaving a tapestry of music, all threads coalescing into
an interesting whole. That Harry Hood and BBFCFM>Kung insanity was
icing on the cake. Set 1 was great too. Don't sleep on this show! A
strong 4 to 4.2 or so if you ask me on .NET
