Solid Wolfman's with classic peaking action. Fuego has an utterly beautiful bliss-y jam (showcasing Trey's honed tone as of late; perfectly balanced IMO) with great Trey/Page interplay, gradually morphing into a heavy as hell and rocking wall of sound with Trey soloing his ass off behind layers of delay and echo, followed by a bit of noodling before dropping into bliss territory yet again and >’ing into Caspian.

Seven Below's jam was also very good. All four just killed it, from Page providing the spacey atmosphere, to Mike keeping it melodic on the down low, from Trey feeling his way through the beautiful tapestry the others painted for him, to Fish providing a steady beat and innovating just enough to keep things rolling through the psychedelic storm, which went on unabated until Trey returned to the Seven Below theme and ended it. It felt like a bit of a borderline ripcord, but still, it's an overall fantastic jam, and a fantastic show.

OVERALL: A very good show that would rank among the best of 2016, and will surely rank among the best of 2017. All three jams I mentioned are all top-shelf shit that I consider prime phucking Phish.

RATING: 4 - 4.5/5

Also, a quick observation:

Mike is mixed perfectly from what I can hear for once; just a little quieter than the NYE run. Keep it up Atschiller!

I thought this show was justa couple of first set bustouts away from being the very most we can hope for from Phish following 2016. A lot of playing in the second set, with Trey very obviously trying to solo less in the first few minutes of the jams, letting the group just sort of evolve on themes and build up some steam. Many times throughout the second set, I noticed that everybody was focused more on groove and melody than on playing licks. This is a Phish I look forward to hearing more from. Now lay off the ocean themed songs and surprise us a little in the first set!

Ironically enough, NICU > Horn, Wolfman's Brother was the meat of the first set, for me. That's ironic because NICU and Horn are short songs that usually don't go Type II (and they didn't here) but they were played with an infectious energy that carried on into the Wolfman's. I get less enthusiastic about Free and Theme lately because of the rust on those tunes: Free's vocals, and Theme's guitar. I never have been much of a fan of Undermind, furthermore, but if it sets the mark for a good closing trio, so be it.

Fuego presented a lengthy jam. Kind of an underwater sort of vibe from this one, which I think also appeared in the unusual codas to Caspian and Twist, but Seven Below is where this show shines most, in my opinion. A brighter-hued jam that had me excited to hear where it would go; where Fuego was more explorational and diffuse, Seven Below seemed honed in on a direction and succeeded admirably in producing an enjoyable listening experience.

I'm a longtime phan, so I hope you'll forgive me if I don't glow over this one. I love Phish, don't get me wrong. And how can one think objectively about a foursome that's got such a storied history, and that has seen good times and bad times over the years: that has risen above every obstacle in front of it and caused us to invest so much emotionally? I didn't set out to "bring bad reviews," but I think this show would've benefited from a wider range of tempi in both sets, as well as more jamming, particularly of the Type II variety, and my favorite Type II is focused. I'm getting too old and jaded to surrender to every single aspect of the flow, and that doesn't make me less of a phan. In fact, it means I know and reverence what Phish is capable of and want them to shine every night for whomever might be experiencing them for the first time *as well as* for those of us who have been with it for years.

I hope inspiration moves Phish brightly over tonight and tomorrow night, and there's been some great playing so far tonight. These are destination shows, so it's not as if an entire tour (or all of 2017, for that matter) is staked upon them. But I'd like them to really wow us with some thoughtful musical diction and direction. Isn't that what we look to them for? I do. Love and light.

This was our 3rd Friday the 13th show with Phish.

My wife and I flew out from England for these decadent destination shows and had one of the best Phish experiences we have ever had. We don't get to many shows these days, our last was Halloween 2016, classiest show I've ever seen, and before that Dick's 2012, took our 3 daughters to the 8/31 show. We are both long time fans, first show at the Roseland in 92 for me and my wife was Red Rocks 93. So we've been through the ups and downs with this band, have seen epic shows, and mediocre ones too. We have done our share of travelling to see the band and 25 years later, they still bring us so much joy.

So this was Friday the 13th part III for us. Our first was 10/13/1995 and then 6/13/1997. We have a bad habit of accidentally leaving things unlocked on Friday the 13th. For the Fort Worth show we left our car unlocked with all our tickets, cash, provisions, etc for the coming 10 days...nothing was touched. For the Dublin show we left the windows and room door open at our hotel. For this night we left the hotel safe wide open with our passports, iPad Air 2 and loads of other things. Thank the blue agave nothing went missing.

Anyway, more about the show and the scene. I have to say that CID did an amazing job with everything surrounding these shows. Checkin at the hotel, we stayed at Dreams Tulum, was smooth. Shuttle transfers back and forth were plentiful and had a great atmosphere. All the people we met from CID were polite, professional and cool. And many of them were having a great time at the shows.

We arrived at Barcelo on the first shuttle so were at the front of the line with the poster peeps. Waiters brought us cervezas and margaritas while waiting in line. Getting in was smooth - there were two lines. One from Barcelo and one from the other resorts that they alternately let 100 people from each line into the venue. This is the first time I've been to a show where RFID tags were in our wristbands and used to gain access. As we entered there were more waiters with drinks, and we were all lead at a slow camel walk pace up to the front. Well, we were about 5 rows back at that point. The atmosphere was buzzing with anticipation.

After we settled in our spot and met our neighbors, I wandered off to get some food. On my wander, I met Tom Marshall. I thanked him for writing all those great songs and bringing so many great hours of enjoyment to my life. He was genuinely thankful and is a very cool guy.

The setlist didn't blow me away but the overall playing on the night was great. Free was tight and I felt the feeling I forgot , both for myself and a jaded friend in New York. But the main highlights for me in Set I ran from Funky Bitch through Horn. I really enjoyed Wolfman's but felt my fat balloon of expectations deflate after a pretty standard setlist. But as I said before, the execution and energy levels were great and the scene on the beach was delightful. I decided to lower my expectations of hearing epic bustouts, a Mexico Harpua or anything super special and just enjoy whatever was ahead.

ASIHTOS was nice to hear, The Wedge is one of my wife's favorites and we got our first Fuego, and a jamming one at that. Caspian's never been a favorite but fit the context of the situation. Loved the Tequila Twist and great to hear Seven Below - I really love the Phishy feeling of this song. Golgi was pretty sloppy but thankfully followed by a smokin' Antelope.

The Contact encore was a treat and you could really feel the love all around. I really like Bug and don't understand the haters. Oh well, to each his own - bug, it doesn't matter.

The next day we met up with many of the same people, including Nik Orr, who said I was raging hard at this show and said "Hey, you got your Fuego."

Standard setlist, solid playing and outstanding atmosphere made for a great night. Whatever happens, there is always some fire at a Phish show and there was plenty at this one.

Never miss a Friday the 13th show! Maybe so, maybe not - give it a listen and decide for yourself.

After a great week scuba diving along the reefs of Cozumel and taking in the entertainment offerings of Playa del Carmen m’lady and I headed down to the Barcelo Maya resort to start part III of our Mexican vacation: the Phishy part. This was our second instalment of Phish on the beach and we were both very, very excited to arrive. The previous year we had gone all out and to sprung for an extra resort day tacked on the the front and back of our stay. This time we only went half-out, opting to book the extra day option at the end of the run only. That said, regular checkin still had us arriving the day before the first Phish show, along with 90% of the other patrons.

Though there were lots of people arriving at the same time checkin was still pretty quick and painless. These resort gigs are pricey but the staff seems to go out of their way to treat the kids alright.

Once we got our wristbands, goody bags, and room key we dropped off our luggage and went straight to the resort dive shop. After we made our booking we spent the rest of the day vigorously lounging by the pools and rendezvousing with friends as hard as we could. There was a liberal swath of hamburger munching and much clinking of plastic cups overflowing with clown-coloured rum drinks. Clearly the place was utterly overrun with Phish people and the amount of fun that was being had was on the cusp of staggering.

Fortunately m’lady and I took it easy enough to wake up on the morning of January 13th, 2017 with clear-ish heads, as we had a couple of dives booked. By mid-morning we were in the ocean chasing lionfish and barracuda and gliding under coral arches. By lunch we were onto our first burgers and tequila shots of the day and when the sun started to dip we simply walked down the beach and joined a few thousand friends for an ecstatically great night of entertainment.

CK5 was performing his magic illuminating the stage and the entire venue with endlessly riveting and creative light artistry. The light guy from Umphrees Magee (I think) was onsite manning the lights that shone strictly on the ocean, and while his light work consistently upped the coolness (and the safety and the security) of the shows he couldn’t hold a candle to CK5 in the keeping-it-new-and-interesting category. But for this first night at least the ocean lighting was pretty spectacular.

Like, how often do you get ocean lighting at a gig?

We were pretty close for the first set but I found it too crowded so I bailed and found a new crew at the back for the second set where it was much, much roomier. Overall, the show was great and I had a really good time. There is just nothing like seeing a band like Phish in a crowd that small all grooving together in such a remarkably pleasant venue.

This first night 100% confirmed what I said at the conclusion of Phish’s Mexico run the previous year: this is hands-down my favourite way to see this band. And I suppose that’s why I came back for round II.

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