My expectations were running high after the previous 2 Bayou shows and I wasn't disappointed. Right out of the box we got a guest in John Popper sitting in for Don't Get Me Wrong. I was unfamiliar with it, but it was a great little rocking blues to set the mood for the night. I was a little confused with the Landlady that was up next as I only knew it as the calypso part of PYITE on a tape I had, but it moved nicely to Bouncing which had grown on me over the year I had been listening to Phish. Foam was pedestrian and true to form for the time. Cavern was when things began to take off and the YEM/Oh Kee Pa/Possum run left us all ready for a fat second set.

What we got was not so much. Suzi was standard and Stash hadn't hit it's stride. If I Only had A Brain was fun for the Fishman tune and the Golgi began to pick up steam. the highlight of the set was unfortunately the end of it with Magilla/Antelope, both of which had some great moments.

The funniest thing for me was Contact. On my way home to baltimore I was followed by a cop for several miles. It kept running over in my head until, just before I hit 95 a car cut in between me and the cop and his lights flew on, pulling the poor soul behind me over.

Nice crispy audience recording for this show. This is the first DAT of a Phish audience recording to circulate, 3 years after DAT’s were introduced.

Set 1 starts out with Trey telling the crowd that Don’t Get Me Wrong was written with Popper over the summer in Burlington. Decent first set. Highlights: Don’t Get Me Wrong, YEM, Oh Kee Pa>Possum

Instead of predictably preceding Oh Kee Pa to close out Set 1, Suzy intern opens Set 2. Another solid Stash. Zero Man gets called to center stage next with a delayed HYHU intro. Some minor drop outs in Brain and Golgi. Really nice version of Magilla with all four members taking a solo. This leads into a strong Antelope closer. Unfortunately the Contact encore is cut from the recording.

This was my first time hearing "Don't Get Me Wrong," which I had been meaning to do since I'm a Reba junkie. It's not bad, though it's just a basic little blues number. I was a bit surprised that Popper didn't sit in on more songs, especially YEM, but it's just DGMW. Speaking of YEM, that's probably the only other real highlight, IMO, a very nice, raging version. Everything else is pretty standard to slightly below average, although the Magilla is...odd. Not bad, really, just weird. Stash kind of falls flat at the end - I think Page has to drop out due to piano problems, which are then mentioned by Fishman. Page comes back in during If I Only Had a Brain, but I wonder if it was the piano issues which are responsible for how short the second set is. In any case, I think three stars for this. Not bad, not great, except for a pretty good YEM.