I have just finished re-listening to a remastered AUD of this show (thank you @kernalforbin). Highlights abound; I found it interesting that there are four bold-face .net jamming chart versions of songs in the *first set*: Possum, Reba, Foam, and Melt. More favorite moments are in the second set Weekapaug, and the second-to-last performance of A-Train.

In the notes to his remaster, @kernalforbin opines that this show should be a future LivePhish SBD release, and I concur. The AUD source is not the best; the audience at this show is one of the chattiest I've heard on tape. Kevin Shapiro played a SBD of this incredible Reba during a special FTA show for the band's Walnut Creek DVD release, and I would really like to hear more of this show with less distraction. But I will gladly listen to this AUD for now!

I've never heard the second set of this show, but the first set Reba is one of a kind. It almost immediately abandons the typical Reba jam and goes on a Type II walkabout. Until the fall of '98 this was the one truly Type II Reba (there is another one that strays into that territory briefly, but the date escapes me and it is not nearly as adventurous). It remains one of my favorite Rebas, especially because they not only take it to new places, but return and give it the soaring ending that a good Reba jam deserves. I'll warn you that some a lot of the jamming to be repetitive and odd, but I highly recommend it.

This show is rightfully known for a phenomenal Reba, but the Split Open and Melt and Mike's Groove are also great. There is a nice jam in It's Ice, as well.

Ok, so this show is the 5th installment in the rebooted Phish Show of the Week, and what a show it is. Smack dab in the middle of the legendary August 1993 run, there are so many little nuggets in this show. And THAT REBA!

Show starts off with Axilla to get the crowd going, and then drops into, what is possibly, the best Possum I have heard. I'm not a Possum lover, but this version is just nuts, balls to the wall wackiness. The ending is also totally off-kilter, and will leave you shaking your head. Quick and sweet Horn, and then the King of all Rebas.

This Reba, wow. The composed section has hints of verbal lunacy by Trey, which I have been told was indicative during this era of a HIGHly tuned in Trey (read: 2/20/93). He is on tonight. When the chill hits it immediately veers into right-field, and we hear, just three days after the amazing Murat Gin, another stellar example of the primordial Type II jamming that is Aug 93. You must hear this Reba. Even after the whistling and Reba ends, they then play a nice little postscript. I call it the "Reba jamlet".

Sparkle next, and then a beautiful Foam, which gets almost completely silent, and then just a FANTASTIC jam which goes all over the place. They were on fire! The I Didn't know had Fish on the Madonna washboard.

Crazy, QUIET ending to I Didn't Know.

Absolutely amazing Split Open and Melt. I'm not a fluffer, but this show is really that good. This is an atypical SOAMelt. Seek it out. Listen to it.

Coil to end the set, with some great discordant jamming before Page's outro.

Mike's Song starts Set 2, and Trey is all over the place, improvising all over the verses, another sign that Trey is completely TUNED IN! Great stuff. The tramps section starts off dark, and in the usual minor key (I don't know shit about music, I don't know why I type stuff like that, I hope I'm right). Fish is feeding off of Trey, and they are simply killing it. I can imagine the strobes and fog pouring off the small stage. Must've been a blast to be there. Second jam hits. Man, I wish they would still do the second jam. Hints of Simple, before Trey finds a new riff, and Page shines for a bit. Stop and start type jamming, kind of. They then enter what I am dubbing "the elf jam." If Leprechauns were to play music, it would sound like this (not to be confused with Leprechaun). Back into Mike's. That was beautiful.

Mike's Song > ....Faht???? How about that. I've actually seen this song twice, both times were very confusing. This one got me as well. I wasn't expecting it. Was trying to figure out what the hell they were going to play, when I realized that they were "playing" Faht (or Windham Hell). Between the crowd whistles, it totally confused me. I couldn't hear Fish playing his out of tune guitar for crap though. Must've been acoustic, unplugged.

Foghorn > Weekapaug Groove. They're having so much fun. Strangely, as they're singing the tempo speeds up a bit. Mike sounds great, intertwining with Trey. Wonderful Weekapaug. Great middle, with stop and go jamming, with Fish filling in the holes. Love it! Trey's blasting great notes. Wow. This is why I love Phish. Great Gypsy Queen tease. The Weekapaug then gets real mellow, and Trey plays some great melodic licks before they all fall in line into a descending jam which goes up and down. Damn. It then vamps into a vampy jam. Vamp! Moundish. Fitting that they play it next. Jam speeds up into what sounds like the Big Ball Jam, but that is to come later in the set. Possum jam of sorts. Back into signature Weekapaug riff. But they still take it out for another spin. Weekapaug Grooving around St. Louis. Into main outro of Weekapaug, with singing. This should be in the jamming chart.

Mound > It's Ice. I'm assuming Fish does his "dance" on his seat, and Trey and Mike were on slide boards (you can hear the crowd cheering real loud for no apparent reason), that one would pretend to ice skate on, sliding side to side). My Friend with acoustic intro (love that!). Fantastic outro to Knife. Really playing around their vocals there. Poor Heart, and Big Ball Jam.

Something happened at the end of BBJ to elicit an "aw, man!" from Fish. Did someone knock the ball way outside of the "hoop" Trey and Mike made with their arms? I think that's probably it. No net.

Take the "A" Train (great bass solo!!!) followed by a badass Good Times Bad Times, with another atypical jam after Page belts out his lines. Short but sweet, with semi stop start jamming again. Damn, this show is sick.

Encore has an Amazing Grace without microphones, and Rocky Top to finish it off.

Glorious, Aug 93 show! 4 out of 5 stars. Will listen again. Many times.

This show was one of a few that I caught in this summer of 1993. A few days after the epic show at the Murat Theater in Indianapolis, we got back to St. Louis (where I lived at the time) for my second show at The American Theater.

Back on 4/14/93, Trey’s friend Roger Halloway got on stage and asked his girlfriend Jen to marry him (She said yes). And Trey made reference to Roger this night too. I think he was there again. So that was fun.

We managed to get right up to the front for this show and could sense something different about the mood right from the beginning. When Trey came out on stage he was uncharacteristically wearing a knit cap (and maybe sunglasses, I can't remember) and was acting energetic and a bit odd (looking back now, I am thinking high on something.) So, Axilla was a great, up-tempo opener. Right into a good Possum and then Horn. Horn was played quite well and I really love the composed section of this song.

As the above reviewer said, the Reba is the highlight for me. It's an amazing jam, with particularly great ideas and playing by Trey. It gets into a great mood right away in the jam and soars in a way that is not typical of the (possum-type) sawtooth soaring guitar notes followed by a period of dissonance and then back up to another soaring note. This was something different and special.

Sparkle was the overplayed song of that era and I usually could do without it. I feel like that song is their Bouncing Around The Room, mark II. In any case, the Foam was great and got to a completely silent section that was super fun to watch. I remember the Melt being great too, but it's totally out shined by the Reba. Just get a hold of this Reba and check it out. You won't be disappointed.

I come back to this tape (I say tape because I listened to that cassette over and over again before I got it on CD and then eventually iTunes) often and listen to this first set a lot. In fact, I didn't even have the second set so I don't really have that much to say about it because I can't remember the particulars just from having been there.

I know there's a lot more to talk about regarding this excellent show, but about that Weekapaug Groove:
Another Brick in the Wall? - Maybe it's not enough to be considered a tease because Mike used the same baseline (from 5:00 - 5:25ish) during the Gypsy Queen jam, but Mike brings it back and the rest of the band pick it up at about 6:23. It's obviously too fast, but it seems intentional.
I also hear a bit of (and I know that the song wouldn't exist for nearly another decade) Pebbles and Marbles starting at about 12:20, and especially at about 12:43. I bet if that sequence happened today, it could be considered a tease.

Great show. One of the most interesting things about it are these two odd jam segments in the first set: Possum ends with whistling, like a Reba ending on bad acid. (By the way, this Reba's on acid . The other short jam precedes SOAM, and provides a counterpoint to SOAM's weirdness.

The 'Paug features an astoundingly cool jam on Gypsey Queen. All these little details show just how far the band was stretching their Type 2 in August 93.

Amazing remastered source can be found on etree, but the spreadsheet version is pretty poor quality.

Individual dexterities and collective agility is what is to be had on display in this show. In a word, virtuosity. It's almost disconcerting how sharp Phish was at this point in Phishtory. The Recommended Jams are recommended for good reason, but really, everything in this show is played with amazing skill (and grace!) It just goes to show what happens when a band believes in themselves and practices and tours with great frequency. I think my favorite part of the show is either one of the handful of Type-II Rebas to be found throughout the ages, or the Mike's Groove. The Weekapaug is certainly extended, and certainly Type II... the Mike's second jam achieves Type-II status almost immediately. But I'm also very partial to Take the 'A' Train, of which I've not heard many Phish covers. This is a really great show, but as for the brand-spanking-new St. Louis '93 box set, I like 4/14/93 better.

THE GOOD: In all my years of listening to Phish, I don't know if there's a better show opener than this Axilla. Actually, I don't know if there's a more lopsided show in the band's history than this one - set one just absolutely smokes. Possum, which goes into hey-jam territory, complete with some evil moaning and a CYHMK tease, is one-of-a-kind and a must-listen. It even ends in a herky-jerky fashion that I've never heard since. I love the mid-set Reba, which also features hey-jamming and a near-foray into JJLC, but then returns back to the main theme gloriously. Even the Foam is outstanding in this set, with a fantastic silent jam, you really can't lose! The SOAM is laden with tension - and, although overshadowed by the Red Rocks version - is very solid. The second set features a strong Weekapaug with teases all over the place, but it's really the first set that shines here.

THE BAD: This show is lopsided as all get out. The band runs into some problems in the meat of the second set (flubs in It's Ice and MFMF), and chooses some relative snoozers (Poor Heart, A Train), which make it a little lackluster.

ETC: With hey-jamming to be found everywhere, there are teases and themes galore. Listen for Can't You Hear Me Knocking teases in Possum (8:10) and GTBT (3:10). This Mike's features a theme that the band would revisit at the famous 12/30 CCCC show featuring the 'golden hose' - listen for it at 6:25. Also, there's a distinctly First Tube section of the Weekapaug (4:45), a possum tease by Mike, and a section that sounds just like Goodbye Head! Don't forget Fish on the 'voodoo washboard'.

Just about every version is played with fire and creativity; there's strange little embellishments everywhere, like the alternate strumming melody in the opening of Possum, the odd little dead end riff roads they drive down throughout said Possum (and not just during the jam), the utterly unhinged dissonant little whistling jam they get into after the Possum ends, etc.

Though this sort of thing was deployed in much more limited form throughout their career to date, this is the exact mid-point of August 1993, universally understood as the dawning of the age of Type II jamming, so these deconstructionist build-to-burn embellishments just burst out of every seam and find their pressurized apex in the Reba jam from this show in St. Louis, 8-16-1993. The jam immediately abandons every vestige of what we'd known to happen in every previous Reba jam and lights out for uncharted territory. This is archetypal Type II jamming, just initated and already in full flower, the first massive evolutionary leap forward since 1990

But then there's the rest of the show (we're not even mid way through the nearly 90-minute first set and already we've smashed through several walls), which showcases incredibly tight and gassed-up playing, including a goofy rest-of-Reba - which also ends with a unique little spontaneous jam that almost sounds planned. It seems the reason why so many versions in this show sound so bonkers and overspill their compositional bounds is that the band is so frigging tight from years on the road that they could play these songs in their sleep and underwater, and they're maybe getting a little bored playing the same songs the same way all the time

The Foam might be the best, most iconoclastic version of all time (it's by far my favorite version of one of my favorite tunes); the SOAM (my favorite jam vehicle) is good and weird and creative - it feels like you've just witnessed a magic trick when it ends. They even get into some odd little dissonant full-band digressions in Coil right before Page takes over his solo

Trey embellishes the verse portions of Mike's Song with blithe, playful soloing, the Faht is an eyebrow-raising bit of experimental Phish that works (so long as you boost the volume a lot); and the 15-minute Weekapaug features extended Santana teases and is otherwise bursting at the zipper with unhinged ideas. Even the Mound is a little weirder than usual (a little). It's Ice is tight, fast, and fiery, as is the MF, MF which brings the weirdness back at its conclusion. Big Ball Jam ends up sounding like a natural extension of the strangeness of the MF, MF ending, and it's testament to how expectation-destroying this show is that even the BBJ is more musically interesting than usual; it ends with Fishman saying "Aw fuck man" for some reason

In yet another surprise, they even play a jazz standard in the fourth quarter - this is one of those kinds of things I wish Phish would bring back. Nowadays it's hard to remember how much jazz there was in early Phish; by 1993 it was already rare for them to play something like Take The A Train. And even Take The freakin A Train is embellished with odd little touches and filigrees. If that wasn't enough, they play Good Times, Bad Times, which - surprise! - also gets deconstructed; it digresses into an atypical, dissonant jam after the vocals end

There's four jam chart entries in the first set alone. Take a look at the song lengths just a couple months before, then take a look at the song lengths in Set I of this show: the Possum is 13 minutes long; the Reba 19 minutes; the Foam 11.5 minutes; the SOAM 12.5 minutes; and the Coil 10.5 minutes. On their previous tour, most of these songs (not Reba) would average 10 minutes or fewer in duration

The whole show just feels to me like the precise location where before becomes after in the history of 1.0. The only things I'm less than thrilled with in this show are: the Rocky Top (because fucckk that song. It's the last thing they play and the Amazing Grace is a much more fitting end); and the Faht is way too quiet on both the SBD and the AUDs of this show. Otherwise, everything just flows so beautifully. They sound eager to play and willing to just fucckk around, but this isn't the mess that is 7-12-1996, to name another show where they elect to fucckk around on stage; in St. Louis in the summer of 1993, Phish was absurdly comfortable in their chosen material and audibly confident that they'll all land on their feet at exactly the same time if they fucckk up

This is a show I suggest everyone check out if they haven't already

Listen starting at 6:11 into Reba. This is a very heavily teased The Peacocks off Bill Evans 'You Must Believe In The Spring' album. It was a nod to his birthday which was on this day. He would have been 64. He passed at 51 years young. Bill Evans if known for his own solo playing but is mostly recognized as the piano player on Kind Of Blue, the best selling jazz album to date featuring Miles Davis and John Coltrane. And possibly even more relevant, just up a few blocks from The American Theater, used to be a jazz club in the 1950's called Peacock Alley where Evans, Miles, Coltrane and many other names frequented. They tease The Peacocks more than once in this Reba.

Ok... here goes.... Everyone seems to really think this show is something else, and it is, admittedly. However, this was my first show, and I had no experience at all with the songs. Completely foreign to a 23 year old "deadhead". You know how we deadheads can be. If it ain't Jerry it ain't sh*t type of thing. So, anyway... our very good friend had been on most of the summer tour and was raving to us about this band. So, when the tour finally rolled around to St. Louis, we got to hook up with her and she scored us tix. They were great seats, halfway up the lower bowl of seating in the theatre. Having never experienced the music, we sort of just sat there in awe at what we were witnessing. Very impressive musicians, obviously very talented, but, not Jerry. Little did I know. So, I tell you all this: You all owe this first set to ME!!!! I swear to god.... I was just sitting there judging and Trey and the boys were to doing everything they could to try to "get" me. Eventually, at the opening of Melt, I found myself jumping to my feet and dancing like never before. They won... ok... who cares... sorry... Ok, just a few unsaid things about this show: Firstly, it was Aug. in the Midwest. Mid-nineties and 100% humidity with no breeze. Just nasty. Then, cram 2500 sweaty hippies in a small old theatre with no air conditioning or ventilation. Pretty uncomfortable, but, nobody seemed to mind. The jam in Foam that goes into obliviated silence featured the band pretending like they were The Who smashing their instruments in complete silence, but, somehow, it seemed like you could still "hear" a jam going on. Also, during Mike's song, the fog machines set off the fire alarm which I don't know if you can hear, but i would imagine that's what led to Faht being played. It was a very crazy night and I feel very blessed to call this my first show. In hindsight, wow!!! I wish I'd have been a fan, but, you know.... I wish I was at the Murat and the Cincinnati Zoo show, too. Want in one hand...

Yet another excellent show from August '93. Both sets from this show feature some really iconic jamming, producing a few truly historic versions of some of Phish's best tunes. A 13-minute Possum in the second song slot demonstrates just how comfortable the band has become with the newly regular Type II jamming, weaving in and out of the true Possum jam with impressive agility thanks to the band's ability to feed off the ideas of one another. After a stock-standard Horn, we get one of the best Reba's I've ever heard. For all the more prototypical Reba jams I've heard (and trust me, I love every single one), it's really refreshing to hear one of the earlier iterations that really strays from the steady Lydian groove with such tactful evolution. Trey smoothly leads the band through a few different passages to explore various energies and moods before bringing us right back to Reba for a blazing finish. Foam and SOaM continue the Set 1 trend: every other tune slaps. The transition to the silent jam on Foam is fantastic and gives Fishman a peaceful moment to just groove out. And PLEASE go listen to the last couple minutes of SOaM: every single member of the band is on fucking fire here, following Trey's lead through some terrifying descending riffs that start higher and higher up the fretboard each time. Fishman is a beast here. With a Squirming Coil that at times achieves both serene delicacy and determined confidence, ending on some more emotionally complex chords, we conclude first set for the ages.

In Set 2, we start to see some telltale signs of where the band is in its development. A sweet Mike's Groove with Faht meat kicks things off, and both ends get their share of Type II action. Mike's jam is heavily reliant on the syncopated riffs, harmonic dissonance, and fragmented groove jamming that is so typical of this earlier era, done extremely well but lacking in some of the more heavily developed ideas that would become commonplace in years to come. Weekapaug moves through several distinct sections, including trading fours with Fishman's drum solos, a Gypsy Woman jam, a somewhat sloppy I Wish groove, and a subdued moment that almost resembles the intro to Pebbles and Marbles. All around awesome Mike's Groove. From here, we get some solid but typical performances to fill out the rest of Set 2. As much as I love the tunes they choose, their placement in the set is indicative of the band's still-developing approach to setlist construction. A few Rift tunes, Poor Heart, Big Ball Jam, and 'A' Train kill some of the grand, experimental momentum the band had developed throughout the first set and the Mike's Groove. GTBT picks the energy back up a bit to close, but I'm left wanting a little more jamming. Still a ripper of a show, though.