This show is why we love this band. It is a shining example of what they can accomplish in this era when they are firing on all cylinders.

Trey was utterly possessed for the second set. I've never seen that kind of look in his eye before (at least when his eyes were open!).

At first you weren't sure how the show was going to go with Trey forgetting the first line of Boogie On plus some flubs during Simple. But it seemed as if right after the Uncle Ebaneezer part of Tweezer they roared forward and never looked back. The Tweezer jam was full of tension and power, much more than one would expect for the show's third song. This would have been a great version in any second set. Roggae soared, Ghost peaked, Ya Mar was full of smiles and the Fluffhead gave everyone a great big hug to end a pretty damn massive first set.

But the second set is really where it's at. The DWD picks up where the Tweezer left off in terms of tension. The band was so tight and the music was pulsating. They were a beast. The transition into No Man's is as good as it gets. Head shakingly good. Sneakin Sally roared through and came with a short blissful jam with Trey closing his eyes and his jaw on the floor (the theme for this set). Killer transition into Possum that had more twists and turns than usual. Carini was raucous, but the jam never totally materialized until they locked into the dissonance toward the end.

The rest of the show was peak after peak. Each song moved in so many directions while keeping it's footing until blasting thorough with its crescendos. I was so taken aback that I completely forget that Tweezer Reprise was coming.

While we all knew what was happening, it was so nice to see the band obviously feeling the same way. At the end they all came out on stage together with arms wrapped around each other to take a bow. You could basically see them saying "holy shit that was fucking great!" to one another.

A very special send off from Mexico. We were blessed to experience it either there or on couch tour like myself. Thank you, boys!!!

The second set is stacked, but the jams were either short or Type I (though we did get some tasty segues.) I think Tweezer and Ghost are the highlights of this show. The Tweezer went deeply funkdafied, in a manner not typical of Tweezer these days, *and* was finished, and the Ghost took a major-mode Went-Gin-style direction that paid off in spades. Nice to see Boogie On Reggae Woman open a show for what is apparently the first time ever. I'm over DWD set-2 openers, especially ones like this that are both unfinished and jam only sparingly, but the segue from Sally into Possum, the Shipwreck quotes, and the Bowie, Hood, Slave, Tweeprise ending make the second set entirely worth an attentive listen. This is the only show of the 3 thus far this year that I consider a 4-star show. $0.02

After enjoying our Tequila Tasting session at Dreams, we boarded the first shuttle to the venue accompanied by a massive downpour of rain...the sweatband on my Stetson needed a good wash anyway.

Thankfully we had our rain ponchos for the wait in line and once again we found ourselves back on the beach within 10 rows of the stage - dead center. More heavy rain ensued and people were soaked but happy to be in such a beautiful place. The rain made the sand hard but we've danced on worse. Of course the stage was soaked, equipment covered, uncovered, recovered, uncovered, water swept off stage, leaf blowers or something similar on stage to dry things out. But look the storms gone and the band came on shortly after things had dried out a bit.

One thing I noticed the first two nights was that there was quite a bit of discussion in between songs. It was all very loose, like no pressure on big red to call all the shots. It was good vibes all around. But there wasn't that much discussion on Sunday night, lots of segues and high quality playing instead.

Set I - despite lyrical flubs (and there were a few this weekend) Boogie on Reggae Woman got everyone shaking off the damp and dancing with Sunday show zeal. The rest of the set was ssssssolid with some stellar jamming and segues. 'Nothing' seemed out of place, but hey was this the bustout of the weekend or what? Only it's 7th outing and hadn't been played since 2015! Nothing to write home about but I'm not complaining. And the Drummer boy tease in Ghost made me feel like this was an extended New Year's run. Trey and Page were laughing - with us or at us I couldn't tell. Yamar, STFTFP and Rift brought some good vibes and Fluffhead...well come on, it's Fluffhead! It felt like coming home again. Deep joy to close a great set.

Set II - We moved back for the rest of the show dancing down by the shore and under the palm trees again. There really wasn't a bad place to be watching these shows, the sound was great, and I like to see things from a different perspective. I can't really say much about the second set, except, listen to it now! If you haven't already, what are you waiting for. Great playing throughout. Apart from NMINML, this set could have been lifted straight out of 1997. It felt like an old school set list with some new school jamming. Very Nice, because I feel old school and need some of the new school to keep me young.

A great Slave and Tweeprise to send us off from yet another Phish experience for the history books.

The moon, looking up at Orion and other stars just above stage, the clouds, the amazing phans, crazy lights by CK5, great sound and great playing from the band...wow. I didn't make it last year but would consider selling a kidney to go again next year. It was a privilege to be there and I am so grateful for the experience. Thank you Phish, CID, Dreams, Mexico! Via Con Dios!

As I stood in line at the omelet station at the Barcelo resort in Riviera Maya, Mexico on the (late) morning of January 15th, 2017 I still had not decided whether or not to use the free dolphin experience I had won during a lackadaisical poolside deckchair daiquiri-fuelled BINGO game the previous afternoon. Discussing the issue over breakfast, I rebuffed m’lady’s argument that I should do it if only because it was free and it was something I would never, ever pay to do, but she finally convinced me when she reasoned that if I utilized the coupon I would prevent a paying customer from taking my slot and hence I would be taking $120 or so out of the pockets of Big-Dolphin.

And so I made my appointment and lo I discovered that I had taken one of the last two spots available that day, so I suppose it’s true that I ate up a chunk of their daily business after all. When I arrived at the resort’s onsite dolphin pool the dad in front of me was holding his two children by the shoulders, staring them in the eyes and asking them; pleading with them, “Now you’re absolutely sure you really want to do this, right? You won’t get bored and want to leave, right?” before shelling out almost $700 for their full-on experience (yes, almost $700 – of course when you have to pay such an outrageous amount of money for a family of four to do something you’re going to opt in for the ride-the-dolphin upgrade and the full photo package).

I was handed a lifejacket and directed towards a shower for a pre-pool rinse before meeting the dolphin handler. She was very nice and did a lot of explaining before I jumped in the pool along with and a couple from Regina and their one-year-old son, who I would be sharing my dolphin experience with.

And then I met Alex.

I suppose Alex is just his human-name; I never asked what his actual dolphin name was. He was surprisingly big and thick and very friendly. The handler showed me how to stand so that Alex would swim up and rest buoyantly in my arms. He laid still while I admired the remarkable lines of such an amazing, aeronautical creature. I looked into his goop-covered eye (the goop protects his lidless eyes from the seawater) and apologized for the situation that brought us together. I found out where his ears were (tiny holes behind his eyes) and whispered that I’d do what I could to get him out of there.

He responded, and though I couldn’t make out his accent at all I did learn that his response came not out of his mouth, but out of his blowhole. All dolphins (not just Alex) make their dolphiny sounds though their blowholes. Crazy, huh?

Petting Alex was weird for several reasons. First, petting a strange dude who is in his twenties and is pretty much as smart as most humans and smarter than many of them is just a strange thing to do in the first place, but the fact that dolphins shed their entire skin every two hours means that when you give one a little belly-rub you come away with a handful of dead skin. So yeah, weird.

I only did a minimal amount of petting. I also bailed on what I considered the more demeaning enforced contact, like shaking hands and having Alex come out of the water to “kiss” the side of my face. A couple of belly-rubs aside we didn’t know each other nearly well enough for that sort of thing.

In all I was in the water with Alex for over an hour, which surprised me. And while I’ll freely admit that there’s no reason at all for resorts to resort to imprisoning such wonderful and intelligent beings and conditioning them to perform on cue, I did learn a heck of a lot. Like, the only thing you ever see a dolphin do that they don’t already do in nature is interact with humans. Wild dolphins naturally jump around together and do that tail-dance thing out in the ocean, these people are just teaching them to these natural acts on command. I also learned that enclosed dolphins generally outlive wild dolphins by twenty years, and at the age of forty the dolphins are retired from interactions and spend the rest of their time at the same facility, just swimming around.

Oh, and it turns out that dolphins aren’t fish, they’re mammals. Crazy, right? You’d think that a prerequisite for being a mammal would be to have hair, and if you thought that you’d be right. And dolphins don’t have hair. But they used to! Dolphins are born blind, and for their first week or so they feel their way around using short hairs growing out of their snout. Once their eyes open up they lose the hairs but it’s enough to get them in the club, so mammals they are.

Apparently catfish on the whole are up in arms about the whole thing, or at least they would be, had they arms. Maybe they do…I’ve never won a catfish experience so I don’t know a lot about them.

But now I know a lot about dolphins, which aren’t fish*.

And speaking of not being fish, after bidding Alex goodbye and good luck I ate a heck of a meal (not seafood, out of respect for Alex and the fact that I don’t eat seafood) and sauntered down the beach for the final night of Phish Mexico.

And it was glorious.

Bouncing between parties after the concert I found myself outside the dolphin enclosure in the wee hours of the night. I was about to start calling for Alex to see about busting him and his buddies out Bless-The-Beasts-And-The-Children-style when I noticed a couple of drunken loopy-lous hop the fence and approach the pools. Who knows, maybe they had the same idea, but it turns out the dolphins have their own security detail so I got out of there just as the barefooted chase commenced.

And thus ended Mach II of Phish Mexico, except for the fact that m’lady and I had been astute enough to tack an extra day onto the end of our resort stay so we got to sleep in the next morning while the majority of our fellow Phishy-friends groggily checked out of the resort. And so – after one more day of super-relaxation – thus ended the aforementioned Mach II of Phish Mexico.

Which was nothing short of magnificent, all-told.

*Them just jokes! Of course I knew that dolphins are mammals. I grew up watching Flipper. Faster than lightning.

More ticket stories: https://toddmanout.com

Funny that a selection for Phish’s “Dinner and a Movie” should only warrant four reviews on the .net website.
The first set features four fantastic jams out of boogie on, Tweezer, simple, and fluff. Trey unfortunately falls apart on the back end of Tweezer.
Second set disease>no men’s is standard peninsula fare, with a forced > into sneakin sally, which Page still manages to dominate.
It’s not that this show is “bad” by any stretch of the definition, but one wonders in retrospect why it was given the “Dinner and a Movie” treatment over literally scores of other more deserving 3.0 shows.

This is a much more balanced show than the first two.

Set 1 is reasonably strong, but has too many songs (10) and would have benefited from being pared down by 2 or 3 songs and breathing a little more. Even so, there are some very good moments (Tweezer, Roggae, Ghost, Fluff).

Set 2 is also a little on the packed side (7 songs), but they are good and there is a nice flow.

Much better third show than the first two.