For some reason, I was late to the party in giving this show a deep listen. I think it was the Weekapaug -> Rainbow that really threw me off, and it's still not my favorite piece of Phish music. (Really I'm talking about the Rainbow, as Weekapaug is a lot like Antelope for me in that I tend to like most every version.) What's more, Waste and Train Song have never really done it for me, and they're just sitting there in the middle of Set 2.

In spite of all that, my opinion of this show has only grown with each listen. That's mostly the result of an outrageously good Mike's Groove. As someone who typically falls on the Groove side of the Mike's Groove spectrum, I find this Mike's Song to be one of my absolute favorites, and I think Lifeboy really works well as the filler. Set 1 has a super sharp Divided Sky opener and a perfectly lovely Slave closer, but I keep coming back to that Tube. It's *only* 4 minutes long, but the (too short, obviously) jammed out portion absolutely kills. I shudder to think what would've happened had they played this on, say, 8/13/97 instead of 8/13/96.

At the end of the day, I'm glad I've continued to come back to this show despite some initial reluctance.