really enjoyed this amusing read. nice job with the formatting and even handed commentary. a few ideas came to mind as i was reading this that i thought i'd share with you (fyi, while i've been listening as best as i can to all the leg one stuff, i only hit five shows this summer- JB -> SPAC):

1) seemed like you had trouble searching for SPAC night 1's "achilles heel..." well, for me, something that slightly killed momentum was the amount of repeats from JB night 1, just a few days earlier. i completely agree with you about the solid quality versions of songs throughout the set, but just like when you get a ballad and/or non-jamming tune in the second set, sometimes repeats can bring you down a little. like i knew the antelope wasn't gonna be anything near JB's jam-fest. same deal with sand (though in general, i'm not complaining as much about getting a 3.0 sand any night). chalkdust set 2 opener again? i don't know, i flew across the country to catch phish's last 5 shows of their tour, expected few repeats, and got LOTS. i know that they surpassed their 200 song goal, but to some extent i'd rather hear them play multiple versions of the more rare tunes than play 6-8 versions of the most common 3.0 go-to's...

2) IMHO, star lake's light still holds up as the jam of the tour. as a fan who is consistently rooting for the band night after night, i really don't think that anything else from this leg got to that level. and to add on to the "x-factor," let's go to the videotape (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjsO6qbQVvQ&feature=plcp#t=26m16s), where kuroda absolutely kills it. a true fifth member of the band level sequence here... however, it seems like ck5 killing it is just standard op's these days. anyway, for this jam alone (and i don't even have to go to the sick paug, et. al. to make this claim), i'd put star lake as #1. but #1 vs. #2 is small potatoes i guess. clearly you dig the show.

3) sadly, the "achilles heel" for JB night 3 had to do with my personal expectations. i think sometimes this is something we all have the capacity to struggle with from time to time, but it really hurt me that night. so much so, i might rank it as my least favorite show of the five nights i saw phish (maybe one notch above JB night 1). for some examples, here are a few things that got to me- to not get a reba or a divided sky, after they had only played the former twice and the latter ONCE all tour, after seeing 5 sequential phish shows was unprecedented IMO. i could've used a theme too (again, only played twice this tour)... also with a last show of tour, especially in 3.0 (closing it out on their home turf venue, no less), there's the possibility of them busting out the big guns. harpua, icculus, forbin's -> mockingbird... welp, i guess not this leg. so, in other words, song selection can sometimes hold you back from getting there. perhaps that idea might thematically sum up a downside of this tour. there's some great stuff in there, of course, but in no way are they entering a new "era" as some people like to say... 4.0?! give me a break. none of this stuff is even 3.5, 'fellas (and personally, i still don't think we've gotten anything close to as epic as the gorge rock & roll. honorable mentions being tahoe's light, and CO's tweezer last summer). for most of us, it takes the band going WAY deep for the show to get there, and frankly, they just haven't been doing that. hopefully that's what will happen in leg 2, and we'll get less odd choices in our second sets, less songs in general in our second sets, and a willingness to taking it out there.

4) last but not least, and on a slightly unrelated note, i hadn't ever had heady topper until SPAC night 2 post-show. as beer-snobby as i've become living on the west coast these last 5 years, heady topper stands up to any beer i've ever tasted. truly a top quality american beer... i mean, with this one brew alone, the east coast really gains some serious relevancy/notoriety, which as a former east coaster, pleases me. so yeah, between SPAC night 2 and following the show up with a few of my first heady toppers, it was basically like i was cumming all night. you know, like arnold in pumping iron?