“Only at the largest concert in the world can you get away with playing a song like that.” A younger Trey Anastasio jokingly offered these remarks on the last day of the last millennium, following a 25 minute love-supreme-laden “Split Open and Melt -> Catapult.” To this day I’m still not sure if he meant the brief “Catapult” proper, or the miraculous jam over which its handful of absurd lyrics were laid. But no matter, both were true and still are. The irony of course being that such a big stage would be the last place you could attempt such a thing. The show in Big Cypress was the biggest concert in the world that night, and that this silly band from Vermont were able to pull that off and on their own terms, yielding music and spectacle at once absurd and the pinnacle of collective improvisation was quite the achievement. Eighteen years and a standard dozen donuts later, is it safe to say Phish is about to wrap up a cohesive offering that more than matches it? That in its sheer scope surpasses it? Could we repurpose that cheeky line of Trey’s for 2017, the middle finger to the haters and doubters, and say “only at the largest string of concerts in the world can you get away with not repeating a single song like that.” I don’t think there’s a band in the world right now that could do two nights at Madison Square Garden and not repeat a song, let alone thirteen. (And I haven’t even touched on how consistently great these shows have been, by just about any metric.) So before I recap the band’s penultimate offering, and as we get ready for the finale, I’d like to take a step back and offer a deep acknowledging bow to this latest achievement. This sure has been fun. Am I right?

So of course Saturday night brings the much anticipated Boston Cream donut. Did you think it was going to be any other way? When you take a bite out of a traditional Boston Cream that’s particularly full, sometimes half the gooey insides jump out onto your face before you know what’s hit you. Sometimes that means by the time you polish the thing off it’s a little uneven, but man, those sweets spots when you get the balance just right are pretty choice.

You could argue tonight’s first set is among the best of the firsts of the Dozen. Certainly the Cream->Boston->Cream->Boston pie that the band is calling “Sunshine Of Your Feeling” stands out as a reason, as it most definitely should, but there’s also a lot of gooey gold elsewhere.

“Soul Shakedown Party” caught me off guard, which you’d think by the time they got around to only a couple shows left, would be harder to do by now. This is always a welcome opener in my books, and the “Uncle Pen” that followed served as a nice obligatory warm up to get Trey’s fingers going after the fact; they’ve been busy these past couple weeks and that’s gotta be hard work for an old man. “The Sloth” (which apparently they hadn’t played yet this run, like everything else) evened out the tempo before the band settled into their first excursion of the night in “Gotta Jiboo.” This is a must-hear Jiboo! Do yourself a favour and make sure you balance your palate with this jam before going for the goo. It starts real delicate and groovy, and then packs an unexpected punch. Nice.

In retrospect, the “Fuck Your Face” that set up the Cream Boston pie seems a little cheeky (as if a once rarity called “Fuck Your Face” needed more ammo to make it cheeky), when you consider the orgiastic indulgences of those Boston hits that are both of the band and not. “There are also aspects of Boston that I like,” Trey says back in 1997 in Bittersweet Motel, balancing comparisons to some other stylistically different influence. One great thing about this run has been how much real room it’s given Phish to explore different flavours, without having to worry about being pegged for one or the other on any given night. If anyone had doubts about the Radiohead cover on Friday (and I do not count myself among them), there wasn’t a person in the room who didn’t love the sugar out of this medley the band put together, including the band themselves. The crowd energy at MSG has been unlike anything I’ve seen in a long time, and yeah, it was about as gratifying as you’d imagine. “It’s been such a long time … in the white room.” It works on so many levels. “We’ve been waiting for that joke for 20 years,” Fish and then Trey admitted jokingly. “This whole thing is just so we could do that. Alright I’m out of here.” I remember thinking at the time that it was twenty years ago that I first stepped foot into a show at MSG, and if they had done this then we would have lost our shit just the same. It was definitely a better birthday present than the actual donut I tasted and then shared with others, with no disrespect to Federal Donuts folks. Too much sugar’ll kill you anyway.

I’d like to say the band blew their load after this, but that would be doing a disservice to a ton of other juicy offerings. Another great thing about this run has been how the no-repeat conditions sets up every song as somehow special, like it’s part of a giant career retrospective. What’s really crazy is how many wonderful songs won’t get played. Trey had certainly earned his “Frost” by this point, and they didn’t wait long to get back into interesting territory with the still lingering “Scent of a Mule.” This went into space before Page took it out, and Mike responded resoundingly. Hear this too. This show was already a win by this point. “Fire” showed up to make it back to back nights of Jimi Hendrix quietly finding his way late into the first set. (Do they play “Izabella” tomorrow or does it stay on the unplayed heap? Does it matter at all?) Finally “Alaska” and “Plasma” rounded out a decidedly more contemporary feel to the end of the set, with the latter appearing for only the fifth time since its debut in 2014.

“Ghost” had certainly been on everyone’s lips going into the show, considering it had been haunting the run more with each passing day. Anyway, Ghost did not ghost on us at the Baker’s Dozen, and by now you probably don’t need to be told that a twenty-one minute second set opening Ghost at the Baker’s Dozen is worth hearing. There was a lot of hose here.

Petrichor definitely changed the momentum of the show, and it’s hard for a newer, very long composition to not do that appearing in the two slot in the second set. I’m not sure it was for the better, but the band seems intent on showing this one off on big nights, and it has its moments. “Light” seemed to have some missteps in the jam too (or maybe it just wasn’t to my taste; there definitely were some moments when things got weird in a good way), but I was very happy to hear “The Lizards,” having not seen the song since IT in 2003. The Gamehendge songs especially seem to take on a certain significance at the Baker’s Dozen, and the whole room really screamed and bounced with fury about evil King Wilson, and the Lizards, practically extinct don’t you know. A couple lyrical missteps seemed almost obligatory (“read the book!” my enthusiastic neighbour yelled at Trey).

“The Horse > Silent in The Morning,” “Mighty Quinn,” “Rocky Top” trio that closes the show probably isn’t hiding any more gold than you’ll get out the meat in the middle of this show, but it had old school charm, to be sure. In a way, this show really was like its namesake, with much of its goodness in the middle, where the hole should be.

And in that sense Joy kind of made sense as an encore, even if it wasn’t exactly what everyone was expecting or hoping for. On a Saturday night at the Garden, after creaming all over everyone’s face in the first set, it was actually a pretty ballsy encore, and I’m happy to say I thought Trey pulled some soul out of it in the end that made it the last must-taste morsel of tonight’s offering. A nice palate cleanser.

So it’s down to one last donut. What’s it going to be? Classic? Old Fashioned? Something Simple? Forbidden?? It doesn’t matter. The universe is a donut and the less you worry about what’s in the middle the more fun you’ll have eating it.

Thanks Phish, that was a fun birthday!

Fortunately/Unfortunately this was the last show of the Baker's Dozen run I was able to attend in person (fortunately because I did make 5 of them and this show was off the charts, yet unfortunately due to what lay ahead the following night). My fiancee, now wife, and I were set up to the side of the stage, slightly behind, yet not all the way. I had never sat there before at MSG and it was an interesting vantage point. I remember once thinking (or maybe, probably, definitely, more than once) that I would never ever sit behind the stage...I'd rather just listen the next day. Not sure if that still holds were I directly behind the stage, but being a little behind yet to the side was absolutely fine. The energy and vibe of that area was something I will never forget. If the previous night was the most energetic Phish show I ever attended, this show and, specifically, our location just had the perfect vibe to it.

Musically, I remember just feeling that, by this point, they had clearly reached and were in "the zone" and could do no wrong. The first set was highlighted by (besides the Boston/Cream medley) the best Gotta Jibboo they've played since 7/4/00, with this one being a more focused, patient endeavor to the true Type II behemoth that was that aforementioned Fourth of July version in 2000. Additionally, it feels like Plasma has settled in somewhat to the repertoire now as a silky smooth number that is somewhat flexible in where it works within the set, and, for that matter, which set.

The second set is obviously highlighted by the set opening, we all knew it was coming, MONSTER Ghost, of course the basis for my username. And this Ghost definitely went full on GhostHit, holding it in and in and in until there was nothing left, exploding in the process. It was an exploratory, raging, cathartic Ghost. And, I am shocked that this Ghost somehow is not on the Jam Chart. I am chalking that up to administrative oversight...one the should be rectified in due course (i.e. NOW). The transition to Petrichor completely changed the tone of the set...it felt that the subsequent Light would have been more appropriate in the 2 spot. A heavily compositional, plodding song after a monster Type II jam just did not seem to flow within the context of the set. That being said, I love the song, and despite a few minor flubs, it was relatively well played, and anything that the band is enjoying playing, which they clearly are with Petrichor, I am totally in favor of overall as that passion certainly comes through in their playing. The following Light was out of the box, not entirely memorable, but a good excursion nonetheless, which yielded my favorite segue of the night, The Lizards, which was greeted with feverish excitement from the now Gamehenge ready crow. The crowd exploded during the chorus making the singalong another massively energetic moment, which this run has been full off. The set rounded out nicely, but was clearly just add-ons now that the meat of the show concluded. I left the show with that Jibboo stuck in my head with swirling memories of that Ghost forever implanted in my memory. And, as I write this now, a little over a month later, and reflect on the show and the setlist above, I am left with just one unresolved thought:

HOW DOES THIS GHOST NOT MAKE THE JAM CHART!!!!

The highlight of this show for me was Gotta Jibboo. I really vibe with that song, and it reminds me of my early phandom. Sunshine of Your Feeling seems like it was a lot of fun for the band. Count me in for Kansas Metallica night! I'm glad that Petrichor has been received with more enthusiasm than Time Turns Elastic, though I'm squarely in the camp that wants TTE back. And just seeing The Lizards in the setlist is enough to take me back to some days gone by. Are you guys tired yet, LOL?

My hundredth show, and I was ready to embrace the newest donut flavor. The Boston Creme or (Cream Boston) mashup/medley is not to be missed if you want to hear how hard these boys work. The stop on a dime change from Sunshine of your Love into More than a Feeling and back again is perfectefly executed, and the Tales of Brave Ulysses quotes before Long Time make this entire selection something that only Phish could pull off, the arena fed off it and they could do no wrong. To finally hear FYF was a personal high. Scent of a Mule was straight fire with a more eclectic jam from Page and Trey playing off each n other. Plasma was the icing on the cake.

Ghost beginning set two really took off, developing into some longer themed sections before a long and tight Petrichor and jammed out Light made up the meat of Set II. Trey had some difficulty with working the guitar parts of Lizards but pulled out together for all of us. The rest of the show ends strong but not the strongest. Def check out the Boston Creme part and Ghost through Light. So SO SO Good!

Upon a re-listen and reflection I thought this was a really solid show. I know some have said set 2 fizzled with Petrichor, but the show was more laid back overall especially with the multiple bluegrass numbers, and slower songs. I think Petrichor is a great composition along the lines of some of the other great Phish ones with an absolutely awesome ending jam. Silent in the Morning is another really good, laid back song. After seeing what happened night 13 they were probably saving the set 2 fireworks for then, especially with limited repertoire left on the table. That said there were some really high energy moments even way up where I was in section 414 particularly toward the end of Jibboo, Sunshine of Your Feeling and of course Lizards. From Trey and Fish's banter after Sunshine of Your Feeling it sounded like that medley of songs was a driver behind the entire idea to do a Baker's dozen run of shows with a donut theme... that's a major reason why this should be ranked among some of the best shows of the run.

My first ever Phish show was on 7/30/17 (the "Jimmies" show), and for my second show, I got "Boston Cream". We all knew this flavor would make an appearance, and when the word dropped on Saturday, we knew we were gonna get something.... but what?

Phish may not be the only band on the planet that would open a show with a reggae cover, follow it up with a bluegrass cover, then drop a rocking original number in the 3rd slot, but they're probably the only one who could pull it off so easily. While all three tunes were well-played (as was everything else on the tour), there was nothing really AMAZING about any of them. Then the Gotta Jibboo came along. It was the first moment in the night when things went a little bit crazy, and it was a great version with a big fat jam and a funky groove that went kinda deep into those exploratory places that we all love. What more do you want?? So far, a good show, but nothing outrageous. Then we got an FYF. Always cool to hear, still, nothing special.

Then came the moment that people will be talking about for years, the moment that put this show on the map, the moment that, apparently, the entire run was created around. You have to hear it. You just have to. It's not even one of those things that could be explained (believe me, I've tried). The crowd went apeshit at the start of what we thought was gonna be "Sunshine of your Love", and, listening to the tapes now, I can hear it in Trey's voice as he sings the first verse of the Cream song with full knowledge that he's getting ready to drop something big. There's an anticipation, an excitement in his voice... He knows that minds will be blown, and when it happens and the band turns on a dime, dropping into "More Than A Feeling", the overjoyed, already apeshit happy crowd went into a higher gear of apeshit and took it to a new level of bliss. High fives, jaws on the floor, eyes bugging out of heads, roars of laughter and cheers of approval.... but it wasn't over.... The merry-go-round called Sunshine of Your Feeling is must-hear material and this Cream Boston Cream Boston Cream Boston Cream Boston Cream mashup was a triumph of epic proportions.

How do you follow that up?
What do you do to top that?

Nothing. You don't top it. You cleanse the palette. That's what Frost did. Great tune, great placement. Gave us all a chance to catch our breath and lift our jaws from the floor, get our heads back on our shoulders. SOaMule got weird (as it is wont to do), Fire was hot, Alaska was Alaska (which to me is a good thing, but I know it ain't everyone's favorite), and this performance of Plasma was sublime and all-around fucking amazing, but because of Sunshine of Your Feeling it will probably never get the love it deserves.

Second set....

Ghost!!!! We knew it was coming. Math told us. Simple and YEM were obviously reserved for the grand finale show, and they'd been in the habit of (mostly) opening the second set with big fat hairy jam vehicles. So it was pretty clear that Ghost was coming, and so it did, and a damned fine Ghost it was. Like so many other second set openers in the Baker's Dozen, it went deep and got weird and found some groovy spaces before sliding into another tune we all knew was coming at some point (but weren't quite as eagerly anticipating), Petrichor. Now I dig Petrichor. I dig all the complicated arrangements and dramatic shifts and such, but the placement of this one, after that Ghost... it seemed to suck the life out of the room. It was a fine performance of the tune, but the placement was just not the best in the world. The energy picked back up as the band moved into Light, and by the time The Lizards started, we were back in our high energy happy headspace. Horse > Silent was its typical great self. Then along came the mighty eskimo Quinn. Man, look... I fucking love Quinn the Eskimo. It was Bob Dylan's music that opened my mind up in the first place, and to hear the Phish from Vermont cover the Bard from Minnesota was a special fucking treat for me. Aaaaaaand Rocky Top. I'm a southerner. I grew up on this shit. Of course I'm gonna dig it. And that wrapped up the set... Good time music by a good time band.

Joy. Say what you will about Joy, but I'm of the opinion that any song that includes the words "we want you to be happy" is a fine fucking song and the kind of light we all need in this world that seems to want folks to be anything but happy. I'm also partially deaf and have a cochlear implant, and there's a certain tone and a certain note that come out of Trey's guitar that hits the cochlear and sends the signal into my brain that gives me a feeling that I can't put into words. The sound is something more glorious than anything I've ever heard. I call it an eargasm because I don't know what else to call it. So if you don't like Joy, that's fine. But there are some of us for whom the song brings unspeakable joy. My eyes leaked. It was good.

Anyway, that's it.
My second time seeing the Phish in person.
I'm anxiously awaiting my third.

This was my first Baker's Dozen show and first time seeing the band in MSG. As a native New Yorker, I was pumped because my last show at the Garden was The Other Ones in 2002 with Jimmy Herring on lead guitar. Amazing show in its own right but worth mentioning here because my two buddies and I sat down next to a father and high school aged son in Section 115. When I learned that it was the kid's first Phish show, I felt all the feels because that Other Ones show was my first as well, and my dad brought me. An auspicious beginning to what I hoped would be another epic show based on what I had been reading and following online.

As for the music, it did not disappoint. Sunshine of Your Feeling was truly incredible to witness in person and to realize afterwards that the interview with Page where he mentioned THIS SPECIFIC JOKE was coming true was something special.

Any show with The Lizards is one to take a second look at, and this night lived up to my expectations. Aside from the Sunshine of Your Feeling, Gotta Jibboo was in top form, as was Mike who stepped up with two bluegrass numbers in the first set, Uncle Pen and Scent of a Mule. Bookending the second set with Rocky Top was also a treat for those of us who enjoy the picking arts.

A final reflection on this band and how remarkable this Baker's Dozen run was. Look no further than the first four songs of the first set to demonstrate the breadth of Phish's musical range. Bob Marley cover, bluegrass standard, original plot-oriented rock opera rager, original groove jam vehicle. The fact that they can play each of these four songs so well at this point in their career is why I keep coming back. Glaze on!

This show is a perplexing one. I'll start by saying 2017 is my favorite 3.0 Phish and deserves to be in the conversations with the likes of some of their other peak years. Boston/Cream night had all the makings for an all-time Phish show...one of those that go down in history. Alas, the bigger the tree, the harder the fall. The song selections were for the most part excellent in the first set, with lots of folks getting their first Soul Shakedown and (Phish) Plasma, the first jammed out Jiboo in a while, and fierce energy (from both crowd and band) during the Sloth->Sunshine of Your Feeling, and Mule>Fire. Speaking of the Boston/Cream Suite, I don't think I've ever had a bigger smile on my face at a show ever. Frost was a bit of an odd choice afterwards, but it didn't really matter. CK5 brought out some new moves during Plasma. Very cool.

At the end of the first set, there was a palpable feeling that something special was in the works. With Ghost, YEM, Light and Simple left on the table, most folks in my crew were hoping for a big, dirty, funky Ghost. That ghost did not disapoint and in fact may be one of my favorite jams of the run.

Then Petrichor happened. Petrichor is a beautiful song, but to me has NO place in the 2.2 show slot, especially after a ghost like that. They never seemed to be able to recover from it, and the rest of he second set left much to be desired. The Lizards was a treat, but certainly wasn't the song to get the energy back into the room. Horse/Silent, Quinn, Rocky Top again never quite got the energy back to where it was in the first set/Ghost, and the Joy encore sealed the deal. I honestly felt bad, because Joy obviously means a lot to Trey, and after all they gave us this year, it shouldn't really matter what they do. There was an audible groan during the first few notes.

Overall, the highs were very high and the lows were very low...but there were more highs than lows. This is much like the 2016 Bill Graham Night 3 show where the first set is KILLER and the second set falls flat. No worries, still enjoyed myself. 3/5 stars.

My first time seeing Phish I walked in knowing almost nothing about the band and was completely blown away by what I saw. If I was truly honest with myself I could probably say it was the greatest musical experience of my life at that point, but at the time I lumped it in with so many other great musical moments of my concert lifetime that had come courtesy of bands like Rush, The Grateful Dead, The Tragically Hip, Stevie Ray Vaughan and so many others.

But really, going from hearing just two studio tracks (Golgi Apparatus and Contact) to standing right in front of Fishman and witnessing a shockingly entertaining night of music in Ottawa that included Trey and Mike bouncing on trampolines, two completely acoustic/unamplified numbers, barbershop quartet stuff, The Great Gig In The Sky, and a Led Zeppelin encore; they even played Golgi, so I knew one of the songs! If I take out a slide rule and make a few charts and graphs and carry the one in all the correct places there’s just no denying that it had to have been one of the best concerts I ever saw. Though the last time I saw SRV was pretty epic, not to mention the first time I saw the Stones…

And there’s the rub. I went to an awful lot of concerts (still do) and I simply placed Phish on my large lists of bands that I should make an effort to see whenever I could.

Then I met m’lady.

Before I met m’lady I had seen Phish twenty times. Pretty cool huh? Mmmm-hmmm.

She was somewhere around show number eighty when we met; including two European tours and every show Phish has ever played in Japan. She was/is a superfan. For her the band was simply unmissable at all costs, and when we first started going to shows together (starting with the band’s comeback shows at the Mothership in Hampton, Virginia in March of 2009) I realized that all of her friends were superfans too.

At the time I was still very unclear on what the songs were called (still am), but sitting down with m’lady and her crew was like talking to a bunch of Phish encyclopedias.

I thought I was a fan, but the truth was if Phish was playing in my hometown and on the same night The Stones, Roger Waters, Springsteen, or heck even The Beach Boys were playing somewhere else in town I would have a hard time picking my show. On the other hand, m’lady and her crew would have no problem making their choice.

On August 5th, 2017 I finally joined their ranks (fan-wise, not encyclopedia-wise).

It was the penultimate night of Phish’s stunning thirteen-show run at Madison Square Garden, a crazy little thing called The Baker’s Dozen. Like every other night in the series, specifically themed doughnuts had been handed out to the first few thousand people through the door. This time the flavour was Boston Cream, which roused much speculation amongst the pre-show crowd over what Boston or Cream-themed cover songs the band might play. Everyone was pulling for Boston’s Foreplay/Longtime, a song the band has pulled off several times before.

My seats were in the Madison Club, a completely upscale first-class area directly behind the stage. I counted just 196 seats in the vast section, replete with fancy carpets, a private bar, bathrooms with attentive attendants, ultra wide, deep leather seats and each one was outfitted with its own very convenient marble table.

And what a place to watch CK5’s light show from! No other light guy in the business spends as much time and effort lighting up the audience as Chris Kuroda; with him the band enjoys just as good of a light show as the crowd does.

So I was super-comfortable, feeling great and loving the show when midway through the first set Phish started into Cream’s Sunshine Of Your Love. I started jumping up and down. Then in the chorus they made a brilliant bounce to Boston’s More Than A Feeling. Wow, that was awesome!

Then they snap back to Cream…Tales Of Brave Ulysses, then back to Sunshine Of Your Love, then into the Foreplay jam with White Room lyrics sung overtop, oh it was very, very incredibly fun. They genuinely played Boston Cream on Boston Cream night. These geeks were cool, no doubt about that.

And that was the last moment of my casual fandom of Phish. For it is what I heard next that pushed me over the edge into deep, deep Phish fandom. The next sound I heard would be my entrance into the world that I had been looking in on for all of these years. The phrase “M’lady loves Phish and I love m’lady so I see a lot of Phish concerts,” would no longer be my goto explanation as to why I go to the shows. All of that changed when Trey stepped up to the mic and said:

“Tomorrow’s doughnut flavour will be ‘Kansas/Metallica’.”

Oh my lord, I almost died laughing. Then Fishman explained that they had been waiting twenty years to deliver that joke: this entire record-setting historic run of concerts at Madison Square Garden that had brought tens of thousands of people to New York City from all over North America and beyond for the trip of a lifetime all sprung from the idea of playing the Boston/Cream medley and following it up with the Kansas/Metallica joke.

That is just so very, very cool. Greatest. Band. Ever.

It took a hundred-and-one Phish shows for me to find my jam but now I get it. I won’t be missing these guys much anytime soon.
https://toddmanout.com/

The 1st set is a must-listen, especially from Gotta Jiboo on. I was fortunate enough to catch the last 3 shows of BD, and was surprised to say Gotta Jibboo was the peak for me, and I wasn't even much of a fan of the song going in. So groovy and such tight improvisation on that number in particular. FYF into the Boston Creme bit was mind-blowing, and Plasma to close the set was a highlight as well.

This one takes the cake for me or the donut i should say. My favorite flavor is boston creme and tune The Lizards so this is hands down the best setlist. But alas i have not downloaded it yet so as to the jamming i am uninformed and undermind as of now.
Soon that will change and i will be able to weigh in my 6 or 7 pound mind and my friend my friends out there will get my opinion on EGG of the Tour. We shall hear soon!
Marley is my favorite of the fab four. . . Marley Garcia Hendrix Lennon and I put Clapton as the King of all Rockstars personally no not Trey sorry Phishheads but Clapton is better. But pride is a sin so calm down i love both. . . .u love both we all love both.
Ladies and gentlemen. . . . .TOM HANKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Trey u are such a humble asshole love to hate u and hate to love u