Well andrewrose, I think that might be a matter of taste. I have a tough time slogging through much from '03 and '04 because the out-there-ness doesn't often make up for the sloppiness. A lot of people LOVE the jams from that era and think they're as good as anything prior or since; not me. I fully admit that's just my taste, though. Aside from the "Tweezer" you mention, the rest of those '09 jams don't hold up for me compared to '11.

But as to your main point, I agree; just having fun and geeking out here. Plenty of lackluster stuff happened this month. A lot of people were gaga over last fall; I thought it was a step backward from summer, just because I prefer unique experimental jams to rocking out, even though overall the band was tighter in the fall and Trey was on fire.

Who knows? Maybe leg two will suck. Maybe I'm just on an optimistic kick trying to will the band to keep getting better. There will always be peak stretches and lulls; it's all about different stylistic shifts IMO, rather than a linear path. That was my original disagreement with Charlie: forget about the rebuilding year of '09, but summer '10 leg one was dominated by the whale and Mike was in complete control; leg two was much more experimental, with a lot of soft, melodic Trey/Mike interplay fading into ambient codas; fall was dominated by Trey, intense high-energy playing but much more straight rock-based jamming; NYE run started off as clumsy as anything all year but by 12/31 and especially 1/1 we saw group improv that foreshadowed what we're seeing now, the willingness to go out on a limb and go deep as a group, although Trey was still pretty sloppy, especially on 12/31, and Page was still not really asserting himself much. I hear significant stylistic differences tour to tour, even though it's all very Phish-sounding.

Generalizing: it gets the point across. But obviously, it's a broad spectrum. There were painfully sloppy and boring shows in 1994 and 1997 too.