(Published in the second edition of The Phish Companion...)

Utah was f*cking hot! It was comparable to Phoenix. My brother and I made our way past security a little after six and found our seats in section 102, Row H (sick, sick seats...center stage, about 8 rows back). I saw David "ZZYZX" Steinberg hanging out around the Comcast trailer and later heard that he posted to rec.music.phish to say “what's up”. On a side note, I saw him dashing back to his seats after the show because he forgot his cape. Hope you found it, David.
This show was empty. Even as 7:30 p.m. rolled around, the venue had not completely filled up and the lawn was nearly empty. My brother mentioned that he was surprised that they were selling posters at this show and that perhaps something was up. He was right.
After seeing the Gorge, we didn't know what to expect. Having seen Phoenix, Chula and both nights at Shoreline, I can honestly say that the first set, first night of the Gorge was the weakest set of the tour. Now, there is no such thing as a bad show/bad set of Phish. I lap it up. All of it. I'm not
being critical, but after seeing the boys five of the past six nights, you can tell when it's flowing and when it's not. First night of the Gorge was not.Second night of the Gorge brought it back, but we didn't know what Utah would bring. It was either going to blow us away, or it was going to be a "Friday” opener into “All of these Dreams" type of show.
Anyhow, from what I could gather, most in attendance at this show seemed like locals. There were a few of us who were on tour that I had seen previous nights, but for the most part, it seemed like lots of people were at their only show of the tour. The scene inside reflected this. Not to dis the Utah scene or those who were there that are really into the music, but when the shit was going down in the second set, those immediately around us were completely oblivious to what they were seeing. Here I am losing my shit that they're playing “BBFCM” -> “Buried Alive”, and the yahoos next to me are just kind of looking at me like "What? why are youjumping around?".
To those of you wondering why there was a slowdown in the first set (i.e., “Two Versions of Me”, “Secret Smile”) the stage at USANA faces west and I saw Trey lean over to Page and say something like "let's play this while the sun is going down." This would have normally all but killed a set, but the “Mike's” that followed equaled redemption.
The second set speaks for itself. Listen for yourself and imagine that you had no expectations going into this show other than just a normal, tremendous Phish show and look what you got. I walked away shaking my head, not believing what I had just seen. The whole next day I thought about turning around and driving the other way to Kansas as opposed to back to California.