This is the only show at Memorial Hall, eleventh of the tour. After having Valentine's Day off the boys move through North Carolina with a pretty good show. A few sound issues for Paul tonight. Good recording.

Finally a new spot for Amazing Grace, the opening spot! Not bad I suppose with lots of shushing, as usual. Ok, then a normal opener with a good Suzy. Trey flubs a little of the intro to a good Sparkle. Guelah was also good and tight. Divided Sky had a few spots, but was otherwise good. Esther was still a little spotty because they don't play it that much. Chalk Dust was rocking as usual. Mound was ok with a few off spots. Stash was really good tonight. Beast Boy Tubbs comes out for IDK's trombone solo and this one has some nice vocal interplay at the end. The intro of Antelope was a little off to my ears, but the jam was awesome. Mike teases his It's Ice bass line at the end. Decent first set with Stash and Antelope as highlights.

Second set begins with more timing problems on Rift. Fishman just plays so fast that the rest of the band doesn't lock in with him. The ending was also a little rough. FEFY was good with really good energy and conviction. Reba was also well played, nice solo section at the end. Mike's was really nice jam, but then somewhere in Hydrogen Mike inexplicably makes an awful noise. Broken string or speaker? I'm thinking speaker, because it sounds like Paul puts him up in the monitors to compensate making it harder for everyone to hear. This makes Weekapaug very dynamic as they keep quieting back down. The Wedge also suffered most likely from the same equipment problems. Poor Heart was played well. Mike was late on the vocals after the solo. Then the balls come out and Trey mentions about getting them up to the balcony, which it sounds like the crowd did. And the Ball Jam finally has a reasonably good ending. Not that it really matters. HYHU brings Fish back out for Love You, no, wait for it, BIKE instead. This is a long one as the show notes say that Fish was running around for a while. Fee was rough as Trey picked up the megaphone for the second verse and had problems with feedback throughout the song. Llama was a surprising closer, which of course rocked. Second set had its problems, but the highlights were FEFY, Reba and Llama for me, maybe Mike's too.

Great encores tonight with the dedication of Contact to Charlie the bus driver. This was reasonably well played and followed by a ripping Fire to send everyone out energized.

I'm going three stars for this one to bring down the average score because of the lackluster parts of the second set. Otherwise this is a good show.

https://forum.phish.net/forum/permalink/1377844789

You know how a friend or celebrity with a mercurial personality might occasionally be described by using their name twice? Something like this: "Hey, did you hear Dustin Diamond went to the Library of Congress and farted on the display of the Declaration of Independence?" "Yeah, well, what can you say? That's just Dustin being Dustin." Well, there are more than a few examples of "Mike being Mike" in Phish lore, like this one from The Phish Book (p.27-28):

Trey: Mike has a funny way of getting what he wants. Early on he wanted us to cover a Max Creek bluegrass tune called "Back Porch." He knew we wouldn't do it though, because not only weren't we into playing covers at that time, but we probably wouldn't have done it even if we were. Nevertheless, he came to band practice in Fish's bedroom one day and suggested we write a bluegrass tune together. "A lot of bluegrass songs start with a riff like this," he began, "and maybe we could do it in the key of A." Over the course of a three-hour band practice Mike managed to convince us we were writing a bluegrass original with middle sections, complicated harmonized riffing, the works. Max Creek came to Hunt's about six months later, and most of the band went to their show. Mike was acting kind of weird, though, probably afraid they were going to play "Back Porch." And low and behold, they did. "That's funny," I thought. "Our bluegrass song starts just like this one." Then I thought, "Hey, they're playing our song!"

You don't have to read too closely between the lines to discern how Mike's passive-aggressive nature might have grated against Trey's Alpha Male mindset (although "good guy Trey" tries to laugh it off as a "funny" story). But Mike seemed to relish the occasions that he could pull the rug out from under the bandmate he once sarcastically nicknamed "Leadership Qualities". The most notable occurrences from the stage are the 7/15/99 SOAMelt (began as 2001 until Mike jumped in with the bassline), 11/26/97 Poor Heart (which Trey starts as Rocky Top), and the Reba jam during the 2/20/93 Mike's Song. During the Reba earlier in the set, Mike struggles with his bass part, and possibly gives up trying to get back on track with the others. But during the subsequent jam in Mike's Song, he plays the same part without error, probably while bouncing on his trampoline. Hmmmm.

Due to this clash of personalities, I suspect that February 1993 might have been a time of increased tension between the two guys standing next to each other on the stage. And struggles during (the very difficult composition) Reba may have been the cause - check out Trey's aggressive playing in the 2/7/93 version - but just like at the Roxy, the tension during 2/15/93 was manifested in the Mike's Song > I am H2 later in the set. You can hear Mike's voice crack a little bit as he sings, and he starts echoing the voice crack over the guitar. Then when the tramps jam segment starts, Mike "freaks out" a little on his bass, playing some obnoxiously loud notes, and then he does it again during I am Hydrogen, twice trampling over all the bliss and serenity this song usually provides. Was he passive-aggressively trying to buck Trey's on-stage leadership? Was he acting out against his own self-consciousness about singing a song that was his namesake? Was he showing off for the chicks in the front row? It doesn't really matter why, but it does strike me as a clue revealing something about the weirdness during 2/20/93 set 2.

Otherwise, this is an exceptionally clean AUD recording, from the a capella Amazing Grace opener to the dedication > Contact > Fire encore. Maybe it isn't the sharpest show from this era, but it's still an interesting glimpse into the band's interpersonal dynamics.

"Thank you! Don't go away! Don't go away, we'll be right back! Don't do anything we wouldn't do during the break! Just... sit there! Stay calm! STAY CALM! Remain calm, it's time for the intermission!"