ah good 'ol cincy! this was many heads first show back, so as mentioned in my review for the 2nd night, the u.s. bank arena crowd was buck wild. the phand weren't fucking around, and when phish came out, we quickly realized they weren't either. wilson is my favorite of the "predictable openers," especially for indoor shows. out of the back end of wilson, they slammed into frankenstein. i had never seen this out of the closer/encore slot, so i was really digging the creative and rocking song selection. page, as always, killed this one. down with disease was another first set surprise. this was a pretty solid version, one of the better first set versions that you will get. life boy fit well, and it gave people a chance to breathe. boogie on got everyone bobbing again before going into a straight forward but still rocking antelope. i thought that would close a relatively short set, but they dropped a bonus i didn't know on us before taking a break.

after grabbing a beer and a bowl, i was ready to rock again. once again, phish came out of the gate blazing. they stretched this mikes song out after exploring some funky realms. they then hit an ambient/spacey jam before hitting the big "free chord." no, there would be no hydrogen tonight. a good funky free gave way to a mellow waste which worked its way into a nicely developed 2001. kuroda was particularly hot here. page was nice and funky while trey worked in some cool stash teases. this very good 2001 bounced right into harry hood. there was some slop sprinkled through here, but since i hadn't seen this song since deer creek 2000.... yippeee!! all of these dreams, like friday, can just go away, but hey, i love me a good possum! this one rocked and started to work into a nice little rock/funk groove that somewhat sloppily worked into cavern. this one closed it down appropriately, but some flubs scattered here and there. velvet sea... blah

overall:

i like the 2nd night better, but this was a definitely an excellent first night

highlights:
1
wilson>frank, dwd
2
mike's>free, 2001>hood