WOW. This was my first show since 4/17/04 (vegas - remember that weekend?!) and I was blown away.

They started with a nice mellow "waiting all night" which got everyone accustomed to the dark and the lights, the WHAM - FREE kicked in and everyone was feeling the vibe.

The "Matt Arena" is a very small affair, the sbd was at the back of the floor. Every seat in there was pretty damn good. We were sitting directly behind the stage, which is a really enjoyable place to see a show.

The first set got going with Reba, and it had the full whistling ending, then went into a rarity (for me) Roggae. This sound was beautiful in that arena, and the band pushed the outro jam for new sounds. Then MAZE started up and the place blew up. Trey and Page were facing each other and just egging each other on. This was a constant theme of this show, the Trey and Page ego duel. They were really hamming it up also, as evidenced later by the amazing "sleeping monkey" encore gag which Trey claimed was Page's favorite song, and Page always started to play it but was usually shot down. You got the feeling the opposite was true, but Page was a player and they had a bunch of fun with the encore.

Oh wait, set II started out kind of rough with Carini. I say that because the crowd was kind of sedated and the band just kicked that in. But soon everyone was moving, then I had a weird sensation, I knew the lyrics but I did not know the name of the song. It was Plasma, an old TAB song that Phish were playing, and playing very well. The song has kind of a pathos and a punk attitude that the band captured well.

we got a breather with Farmhouse and the new Halfway to the Moon, which has lyrics I want to hear again. Trey kind of stole this song from Page in the end, giving it a rock star ending. After all of these years Trey is still a freaking beast, just going full rockstar and basically playing like his Arnold S. quote from the movie "bittersweet motel." Sometimes his "going full rockstar" seemed to pull him away from the cohesion of the band. But other times, like in X eyed and PAINLESS, the band just went beyond the PALE and got to that amazing place that they can only get to after years of listening to each other and making space for each other. If you are going to only listen to one "jam" from this show, listen to what they do in X eyed. My girlfriend, who was attending her first show, said "this is the best they have done tonight" during the jam. The band really came together and made something beautiful.

Listen to this show, check out the funny banter in the encore, the band was having a great time and it was so nice to see them after 10 years!