The night after Trey fell into a hole in Buffalo and sprained his ankle finds the band gamely soldiering on, but failing to really catch fire

The first set gets two jazz tunes: Caravan and a fantastic, high energy version of Magilla. Along with an already polished Julius (getting just its fourth airing) that's about it for highlights during an otherwise perfunctory first set.

The Forbin narration references the previous night's accident, when Trey mentions that the audience falls into a huge HOLE! "Not the kind of hole I fell in yesterday, this is the pleasure hole!" Trey jokes as he describes falling into Gamehendge.

The YEM segment with Trey and Page alternating "Sunshine" teases is amusing, but this version isn't particularly memorable aside from the vocal jam which has the band singing the chorus to "My Soul".

The Possum has a very intense jam and hits a unique peak starting at about 8:20. It's way better than the Suzy closer. Trey's parting words to the audience: "Don't fall into any holes. Whatever you do, take care of your ankle."

One is supposed to review one's first show, after all. At 15 years old, this was the night that changed my life. Now middle aged, I return each year with older ears, a bit more critical, and also better able to appreciate the ups and downs of an evening with Phish.

Despite whatever sentimental attachment I've got to the show, there's not really much to distinguish it from any number of other shows on this long, strange, in-between tour. Not quite polished, but decidedly graduated from the clubs they'd regularly haunted as recently as two years prior, Spring 1994 strikes me as a tour that casts about for an identity. Sometimes, Phish tries to ride its new material, and with varying degrees of success. Julius, for example, works quite well, pretty much from the beginning, and I think what later became known as the Julius Syndrome developed quickly: every version is the best version ever: this was certainly the case on this night at UNH. Other songs, most obviously Disease and (especially) Wolfman's, really had no idea what they were, and they fit awkwardly into the repertoire. When not working out the new stuff, Phish would fall back on their old habits: as the tour bled into May and June, the narrations and inside jokes piled up, but they didn't seem to work nearly as well when the band could no longer make out the faces at the back of the room.

This show really is a tale of two sets. The first set is a run-of-the-mill 1994-vintage first set—but it's hot, top to bottom. The cool-down song is Glide, and that tells you what you need to know. Nothing here is necessarily a "must hear," but you could do far worse than to spend an hour listening to this set beginning to end. The two jazz tunes, which would be abandoned by year's end, both work here. Trey's solos on both are fiery and fluent. Though he'll never be confused for a "real" jazz guitarist, he follows the changes with confidence and dives down a few harmonic rabbit holes, building an admirable amount of tension using notes, phrasing, and the occasional double stop—not the delay, phase shifting, and loops that would eventually become his calling cards. Each of the proper Phish songs that round out the first set includes a canonical Big Phish Peak. Again, nothing revolutionary here—just what you'd expect/want to hear on any given night at a generic mid-'90s Phish show in some forgotten hockey arena. I thought I heard the tubes in Trey's amp gasping for breath after Divided.

The second set, for better or for worse, also happened. Nothing quite comes together, though it's not for lack of trying. Maze... happens. Forbin's and Mockingbird do, too. The playing is good enough, and there have certainly been shows with poorer song selection, but the fire that filled the first half of the show has gone missing. Even the Mockingbird Trey leads, which are melodically competent, feel a bit forced. In the end it's a mishmash. An unearned psych-rock peak in Maze. A long narration in a too-big room (before this was rare enough to be Something Special). A recent single that you'd be forgiven for never having heard on the radio. An a capella tune. A Big Ball Jam that was fun at the time (one big ball landed on my young head), but they realized they'd grown out of a few months too late. A perfunctory YEM. An apology of a closer in Suzy—at least we'll send you home smiling. Nothing's wrong, but nothing's quite right either.

All together, this show has tremendous meaning to me, and I look forward to hearing it each April. But my older ears have learned to appreciate the show for what it was: just another Monday night on another long tour. I hope that you'll give it a listen. If you wander away at setbreak, I won't hold it against you.

https://forum.phish.net/forum/permalink/1377956169

Phish began 1994 with a new album, Hoist, finished and scheduled for release coinciding with the start of a three-and-a half-month, 73-date tour across the continent. The band's agreement with Elektra Records stipulated that their following release would be a live album, and the first three months of the year were spent in dedicated rehearsal, fine-tuning their ensemble performance and raising their improvisational abilities. As April began, the band debuted the new material to a friendly local audience, and by the fifth show of the tour in Binghamton, NY on the 9th, it seemed that their touring machine was running smoothly and their shows would soon be the best they had ever played...

...and then Trey fell into a HUGE HOLE!

Apparently, there was a gap in the floor at the back of the stage at their gig in Buffalo, and as Trey was walking through that poorly-lit area at the conclusion of the soundcheck, his foot plunged down through the gap and his ankle ligaments were torn. Although the medical attention Trey received was swift, and his ankle was fitted with an air cast, the show began almost an hour late. Trey was likely adjusting to his new situation and playing through some pain, yet the Harry Hood from that evening is musical proof of the depths of his will and determination. By the next date in New Hampshire, Trey had doubled his resolve to overcome his handicap with an elevated, uplifting performance. He brings the audience all the way up to the ceiling during his Forbin's/Mockingbird narration, and he shreds like Marty Friedman in an aluminum recycling plant during Foam, Divided Sky, and Maze.

From The Phish Book, p. 155:
Page: “We didn't play most of the songs on Hoist before we recorded them because someone in Elektra's upper management theorized we weren't selling albums because everybody had already heard the songs on them. It wasn't a bad idea, just wrong. But it gave us an opportunity to let songs come together in the studio without our preconceiving them onstage.”

Page is typically diplomatic in the above quote, but I suspect that the band may have been observing the beginnings of a backlash against Hoist material among their audience. After debuting five new songs on opening night, they had cut it back to two new songs from Hoist per night, and Julius is the lone "new in '94" song in this setlist. Accordingly, Trey tailored the setlist to minimize the detriment of his loss of mobility. The first set notably features two jazz tunes, Caravan and Magilla, the latter also allowing Fishman to demonstrate his own version of the "Jungle Book beat" of I Wan'na Be Like You. Page takes everyone back to Nectar's with some vintage Fender Rhodes soloing during Suzy Greenberg. Listen to Trey's mock-announcement during YEM announcing that "Brad The-Guy-Who-Throws-The-Balls-Out" would be subbing for him on the trampoline. My Soul gets a preview almost 3 years prior to its official debut performance by the band, and it's also cool to hear the band teasing "Sunshine of Your Love/Sunshine of My Life" three weeks before featuring the mash-up in the 5/3/94 Harpua!