Alright! This recording just crackles with great Phish energy. Foam is an early highlight. It's a workhorse during this period but this one has a little extra mustard on it. GP>Sparkle sounds great. Sparkle is really doing it for me lately and it is well placed here. Stash has a nice jam. Uncle Pen is good. We get a mid set Cavern which is becoming increasingly rare-ish at this point. Good energy on this one. I Didn't Know is good with a brief vac solo and a big goofy vocal jamy ending. ATR is good. RJ closes out this really really good set.

Set 2! A leisurely but fun CDT opener. They're a little loose into YEM, not a big deal it's a great 20 minutes of music. Very long vocal jam in this one but it's a very cohesive one. Good solid Reba. Nice playing by Fishman in the jam. Landlady works great here, nice version. NICU is well placed. Fish gives the audience a choice of Diamond or Barrett and decides Neil wins. My Sweet One is fun and Golgi takes us home! Rocky Top encore is excellent.

This is a great under-appreciated all-around show. Definitely check it out before the highly lauded run up the coast. Maybe doesn't get talked about because there are no huge jam moments but the show flows very well and the energy comes across in the recording.

4/15/92: All kinds of interesting stuff about this show. First of all, during Stash you can hear the crowd going "Woo!" in the spots where the clapping would eventually be.

Landlady > NICU was an interesting combo. This was my first time hearing the middle Doo Doo Doo section of NICU; that section was probably best left on the cutting room floor

Cold As Ice > Cracklin' Rosie > Cold as Ice is pretty funny. First of all, I'm pretty sure Fishman says "This fuckin' song" as they keep at CAI for a while. He then offers the crowd a choice of a Neil Diamond tune or a Syd Barrett tune, the "two greatest songwriters" ever, and Trey says that Fishman is the conglomeration of the two. After Rosie, Trey introduces My Sweet One as being written by the Third Greatest songwriter in the world, who is behind the drums.

Finally, a question. How do you know Trey hates Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? 'Cause he's THE FUCKING SHREDDER!!! This YEM was very good, shred-tastic Trey at the end and some great MMMMMMMMike as well. Plus Rollin' on the River and Rawhide in the vocal jam (which actually is quite nice, rather than the standard yelping and small furry animal noises).

Four stars for this show, on the strength of the YEM and the funny Fishman stuff. After the shredding YEM, I had hoped Reba would be more exciting, but '92 isn't really a primo year for Rebas.

Solid show for this time period. Great sounding bootleg. Good first set once you get through the feedback during Suzy. A little sloppy during Stash, otherwise a tight set. The monitors seem to be a problem for a while. Oh, I forgot to mention a few weeks a go I think Mike got a new distortion pedal. Check it out during Cavern.

Mike has a funny fill in Chalkdust. YEM has a rough begining but turns out good. Nice vocal jam as always. Reba and Landlady are fine. NICU still has the weird middle section. Listen close before the start, Trey asks "Is that too fast?" Fish gives the crowd a choice of songs tonight. Then the self titled third greatest song writer in the world gets a My Sweet One going. Golgi sounds a little out of tune on Trey's part.

Memories and Adeline are missing from the bootleg.
Rocky Top is great as usual.

Great soundboard recording for 1992. I love that you can hear Trey calling out songs and laughter in between.

My 1st show!!!!

(Published in the second edition of The Phish Companion...)

This was my first show ever! By this time I had already heard a tape from the Catalyst show in October, so my interest was piqued. I had just recently moved to a loft in downtown LA so the show was about as local as it could get. The theatre itself was beautiful! Very ornate and somewhat inappropriate for a rock show. In those days when Dionysian Productions was booking Phish in some of the prettiest old theatres in California.
I remember liking Widespread Panic as the opening act. But they were not quite in the same league as the headliner. Phish grabbed me by the ankles if not from the first few bars of “Oh Kee Pa” then definitely by the time they started raging through “Suzy”! I found the band to be an interesting mix of many of the musical styles I like, yet, somehow they still were not easy to pigeonhole into a simple category. The band ranged from bluegrass covers with all due respect to Bill Monroe to insane vocal jams that twisted and turned and included quotes from popular songs. Man! Who and what are these guys?
I did not realize until much later how cool that set had been! If anyone has a tape out there that would be really fantastic, Well, needless to say, Phish hooked me and I was signed up for the rest of the shows that tour that I could conveniently make. The next two or three nights were spent driving from venue to venue.

(Published in the second edition of The Phish Companion...)

This was my first show and the band's first ever appearance in Los Angeles. The venue was an old theater, all seats, with most of the seats on the floor and the rest in a small upstairs balcony. The venue didn't allow taping, security told me to stop dancing, and also went after people smoking inside (they were kicking people out of the show if they caught you). It was my first Widespread Panic show as well (they played for about an hour as an opener). I had been listening to Phish's studio albums and a few bootlegs for at least six months prior to the show, so I had some familiarity with the older material. All of the "new" stuff is funny to listen to now, not hearing any crowd reaction on the tape but knowing that if the song were played today it would be considered a kickdown.
The first peak comes during "Stash" in Set I. They play well through the end of the set (including my first vacuum solo experience) with a really intense "Jim" to close the set. By the time "Jim" was over I decided to drop the rest of my holiday plans and go on tour.
Second set starts with the slowest "Chalk Dust" I think I've ever heard, but then is followed by the peak of the second set, the "YEM"/"Reba" combo (including my first trampoline experience). Both songs are played especially well, with everyone in the band really playing at 100%. There are great tones from Page and Trey, and solid rhythm from Fish and Gordon. The rest of the set isn't bad, but is pretty average, including a funny version of Neil Diamond's "Cracklin' Rosie" my first Trey-on-drums-for-funny-Fishman-cover experience). "Golgi" was a crowd pleaser as always, and they easily got the crowd to quiet down for the two a cappella numbers, then sent us home with "Rocky Top".
Overall a pretty average, solid show. I really enjoyed listening to it again recently as a nice quality soundboard source is in circulation, and would suggest tracking it down if you'd like to hear the warm-up show for the epic 4/16-21/92 run.