great recap, i also enjoy the 3-part format.
so, if i'm counting correctly, outside lands was my 76th show. while i'll probably always prefer my first show, 12-8-95, this might be #2. seriously. yeah, no real type-2 to speak of, but if you are a quality over quantity person, you'd be hard pressed to find more satisfaction from another show than outside lands. they obviously came there to win over the crowd, and i'd say they did that in spades. there was often a palpable sense of "huh, i thought this was going to kind of suck, but it's actually kind of awesome".
roses is probably a great example. a 5:35 roses understandably doesn't elicit any thoughts of "omg, i *have* to hear that", but you could at least debate that this was a best-ever version. sure, 4-3-98's is kind of insurmountable, big cypress's 45min trance-state roses is kind of incomparable, but in terms of nailing the song so much it might make dean ween cry, if you know of a sicker version, let me know!
tweezer, mike's, & r&r were each focused monsters.. mike's was the type that makes you relieved to hear h2o. and even weekapaug & possom had those kinds of moments where you can look around and see all the noobs thinking "huh, *that* was kind of crazy".
it was the kind of show i most like to describe as "ridiculous" (read-icculus?). a friend likened the playing to the princess bride, when they switch from sword-fighting with their weak hand, only to surprise their opponent when they thought they'd blown their wad. i mean, it only takes :20 to take that peak 2 levels higher than you were expecting. classic tension/release & machine-gun trey all over the place.
mound started off promising, with an no-guitar first verse, which was a fun change, but eventually we did arrive at the section-of-many-missed-notes. as such, it was the only one you'd want to skip, if you're not a to-the-grave mound fan, like my sister. but don't skip sample, moma, axilla, wilson, julius, fluffhead and chalkdust - EACH went for the jugular. it was punishing.
and oh yeah, in case you don't know, the coldest winter festival i ever went to was a summer festival in san francisco. an extra treat for the victims of "nature's air conditioning" was so many of the songs had lyrics about cold, freezing, and ice.
and yeah, i didn't mention piper yet, but since the last pipers i've heard are miami09 & merriweather10, i expect nothing less than a debatable top-show-highlight from the song. finally, to put a punctuation mark on the precision craftsmanship we were treated to every moment of the show, phish brought tweezer reprise to a crashing halt, after maybe throwing in a few extra bars here or there, exactly on the advertised festival-end time of 10:00. a non-phan friend thought it might been to the second.
for pure second-to-second enjoyment, this will be a the show i'll be pulling again for a while.