2018-10-28 Rosemont, IL

Everything's Right - unexpected Type II jamming opener! Very beautiful, actually. 

Destiny Unbound - Excellent version, comes close to being "jammed out" but never really gets there. 

Heavy Things - I love this song but am almost always disappointed by live versions of it. Toss this one in that pile. 

Miss You - absolutely SOARING guitar playing from Trey. Wonderful rendtion. 

Tube - Takes a long time to get going but around 7 minutes in we get a full-blown "I'm a Man" jam happenning and things head for the sky!!!! Worth hearing for that alone

Up next is Petrichor - other than the other 2018 versions, I can't honestly say I've heard the song more than 2 or 3 times total. I love Time Turns Elastic, but Petrichor has been way harder to keep me interested in, so I won't really be able to say one way or another how good this was. 

---> ---> ---> Wow! I enjoyed that way more than I expected to. It seemed pretty flawless execution-wise. Also it felt a lot more cohesive than TTE (which sometimes feels like 5 different songs slammed together) 

I Always Wanted It This Way - This is such a weird song. The first I heard was the Mexico 2019 version and it hooked me on it! I love it, haha. This one wasn't the beast that one was, but it reached Type I Energy Explosion Melt Your Face levels, so that's good

Awesome version.

This set was excellent - the only out and out non-highlight was Heavy Things. This was easily the best complete overall set since the Nashville shows  

Night 3 of the run and up through What's The Use it's basically been a home run.

Reading .NET reviews and the forums over there just for the heck of it, I'm not jiving with most opinions of this run.

For me, Show 1 and 2 both had lots of major highlights, but were not totally overall great shows. They were both very pick-and-choose, imo.

This show, 10/28, is imo the best of the 3 by a wide margin. As a complete listening experience it's been a perfect play from the start.
Hell, this second set has been a spectacular example of choosing the right songs at the right time!

Carini>
No Quarter>
Cities>
Gotta Jibboo>
Twist>
What's the Use>
Twist

That's a 54 minute segue fest. And a true built-by-the-second one at that. Not some ripcorded bunch of songs jumbled together. This was legitimate evolution from one song to the next - organic, rather.

And that's what is separating this from the other 2 shows for me. The whole show has hung together as one piece remarkably well, regardless of whether you enjoy the setlist or not (no major qualms from me).

In other words, ROSEMONT '18 #3 IS WHERE IT'S AT!

 

2018-10-27 Rosemont, IL

Stash - not my choice of opener, but it had a pretty tasty jam. Got dark! 

The Dogs - rocked good and raised the roof but didn't do anything jam-wise 

Blaze On - I still think the song itself is dumb, but this was a great version. The jam was must-hear, imo. Just wonderful upbeat bliss jamming that rocked. 

Water in the Sky - beautiful but non essential 

Ya Mar - Very fun, keeping the upbeat momentum of the last two songs. Non essential though a good toe tapper

Vultures took the fun mood of the previous songs and turned it dark.
 

46 Days was short (8.5 minutes) but went full Type II black hole rager!!!
 

David Bowie - Not a fan of this one. Nice jamming but the song portion reeks (TREY).....

Overall a strong B+/A- set, imo

 

Moma Dance - excellent straightforward take.

No Men In No Man's Land - I'm sure you're all expecting me to gush, but I merely enjoyed this. 25 minutes but it didn't take me for any real journey like I hoped. Just a lengthy exercise in excellent funky Type II jamming. IMO, worth hearing once but not an all time.

Steam - They ALMOST nailed the segue into this perfectly! The guys were slowly morphing from NMINML into this and instead of waiting 20 more seconds for tempos to align, Trey just reverse-ripcorded the band into the song like "no! we are changing songs NOW!" Funny but disappointing.

Chalkdust Torture - excellent straightforward take that rocks like no tomorrow. Segued (I think?) out of Steam, Steam didn't really have any jam. It kinda just ended abruptly and they JUMPED into this.  

This was a good, enjoyable, SOLID show. No major trainwrecks, one massive Type II jam, some pretty good segues.

Pretty good upbeat rocking throughout (Chalkdust, Suzy, Fuego, etc) but I can't help but feel this show was a little "flat". Like stale soda or something. There's nothing WRONG with it, it's just not over the moon.

And that's fine! A "very good" Phish show is anyone elses baseline "excellent" show

It just didn't feel like it had the extra "pizazz" goin' on or something.

 

2018-10-26 Rosemont, IL

I remember when this show happenned I was down in Laredo, TX at a T/A truck stop waiting in line for my diesel fuel receipt.

At the time I was listening through 2009. I remember this show was webcast free (or the first song was) or something.

Anywho, nice tiny nostalgia with this

A fine PYITE to open. This is one of the songs that got me into Phish and I am ALWAYS stoked for it on a setlist. Thankfully, this is not completely butchered like so many 3.0 versions, but it is a tad slow. It does seem pretty funky overall though which makes up for it.

Good start to the gig!  

Martian Monster - A nice headbanging funk slam. Can you imagine this in 1998 or something?! Good stuff.

40 minutes into set 1 and it is pretty disappointing.

Enjoyable enough, but all that's worth hearing again so far, really, is Martian Monster and the guitar solo peak in Reba (it's pretty bad otherwise).

How does this show have a 4.5 rating and 10/24/18 has a 3.7?!?!? 10/24 annihilated this to bits so far.

I don't get .NET ratings at all, man...

At least Mercury is next, and I believe this is the version I chose to use for my "Non Albums Songs" compilations a few years back, so I am actually quite familiar with it and it is a beast!  

Not really jiving with this show for some reason. On paper I should love it but it just doesn't have the energy and X Factor of the 2 Nashville gigs.

This is definitely a cherry-pick-your-favorites gig.

So far:

Set 1
Martian Monster - awesome heavy funk workout, very 1997/1998!!!
Reba - the composed section sucked but the guitar solo peak was mind blowing!
Moonage Daydream - maybe the winner of set 1. This has the Nashville energy!!! WHAT A BANGER!!!! FREAKIN ROCKED!
Mercury - doesn't really go anyhwere in its duration, but its 18 minutes of album-ready perfection.
Walls of the Cave - Its WOTC. It's an explosive nuclear guitar bomb. We know this.

Set 2
Tweezer - INSANE DANCE PARTY TYPE 2 BEAST!
Golden Age - SEE ABOVE!!!! 

 

Eh, I finished my review there at the time. Sorry folks! :)