this show reminds me a lot of the 03 burgettstown show. the jams are not incredible, but the playing is still pretty damn strong. oh yeah, and the set list is sick.

the punch/bag combo gets the crowd amped. these are both played pretty straight but precise. nicu works well out of bag, and it keeps the energy and flow going. then they resurect the forbin's/bird combo. what, no story? either way, you gotta love the mockingbird. boaf works well out of mocking bird. this one has become pretty nice to hear now that they are doing it every 3rd night. plus, they tend to play it pretty well these days. lawn boy provides everyone with a nice cool down before a firey stash gets the crowd going. page plays under trey brilliantly. the rest of the first set is kind of blah in my opinion, but who cares, they played forbin's!

down with disease stretched out nicely. except for shoreline, they never found that old school stride with this song in 09, but they were on their way here before slamming into wilson. this dwd was pretty rocking, too bad they cut away so quickly. i wish they would have sprung back into disease after the wilson ending. alas, they did not, but slave will work. this one is played at pretty well, but i would not classify it as must hear. piper, which it did all summer, really took off and provided the boys a place to really cut loose. trey gets pretty wild on this one before they zip it around into water in the sky. this is quite the odd pairing, but i really like it. from there, they take another little twist going into ghost. this is a pretty good ghost that find s a really nice groove early in the jam. eventually, gordon and trey lead the boys into a very inspired psycho killer. this is a pretty quick run through that finds it way into a "pong" jam and catapult. trey seemed really amped on the pong jam, i'm still kind of wondering why. it was cool for a bit but... then there is icculus. god, i love this song. trey, oh so wisely, states that the youth today need to pick up a fucking book. so, how do you end a stacked set like this?? why, yem, of course! the composed part is played very well, but i lose interest in this jam some what quickly. it gets back into the "pong" jam business. they did lay down a little dose of the funk before delving back into that silliness.

all in all, this is a very satisfying show, on the 2009 scale. the "big jams" still are not there, but phish is always good when they are feeling fiesty. they had some really cool set list selections in both sets, and while the jams were relatively short, there were some really interesting ones scattered around.

highlights:

set 1:

forbin's/bird (of course), stash

set 2:
dwd>wilson, piper, ghost>psycho killer, icculus!!!