2000 was a roller coaster ride with moments of euphoria and sorrow. Up there with the laughter at the Moby Dick Deer Creek show, Vegas was one of the endless reasons I love The Phish from Vermont. From Walfredo to Emotional Rescue this was a powerful show.

Now that I think back on you Walfredo, those were the times I'll never forget. No regrets. WITH. The circus is the place for me. I was that far gone. Trapped in time and I don't know what to do. We had it simple then I Saw it Again. Then Esther died. Sharin' in the groove...

Air horn trigger. Woah Timber. Put 'em in a field and let 'em fight it out. Fifty shows and first Forbin...pile of goo...flyyyyy. And when we heard the end result. Flowing through the hourglass pushing through the funnel. I just had to look, having read the book. Steadfast and true.

This was my birthday show, Trey's birthday show. Phish played til midnight then we ran across Vegas both nights to get to Les' 1AM birthday shows at the House of Blues. Animals. Oysterhead. The crew gave me Stewart's sticks. Met Trey at 4AM and shook the hand that shook the hand.

Rode the wave all the way up through Shoreline.

The end of an era?!

Happy happy all my friends, blow out candles once again...

One of the most underrated shows in the catalog! The first set is fantastic: The Curtain With, Maze, Roggae, Simple, Mike's Song and Weekapaug Groove are all stand outs. The first set is one of the best sets of Phish from 2000-2003 and one of my all-time favorites. Go get it!

There needs to be more love shown for this Maze. It's fantastic ! I agree with the reviews above about the first set. A great 1st set to say the least. Walfredo is fun. Roggae and Simple are 2000 era beautiful. Mike's/Weekapaug are groove monsters. The Maze though. Perfect to my ears. Absolutely love the Forbin's. It's easily one of my favorite songs in their arsenal. Timber, Twist & Sand all reek of the 2000 sound. Dark and easy going ambience. Great stuff.

I like the first set a lot. Walfredo continued the theme of bust outs from the day before. The Curtain With, being one of my favorite songs, is a nice addition to the set. Maze and Roggae both include very good jams. The set-ending Mike's Groove is great. Mike's Song is typically hard rocking. The following Simple is short and sweet, and Saw It Again emerges from a spacey ending. I really like Saw It Again, so this works for me. Having not played been it in a while, Esther is understandably sloppy, but Weekapaug Groove is very good. Mike's bass intro is great and the funky jam in the song is my favorite part of the first set.

The second set is a little short, but it has its moments. Timber has a nice, delicate jam. AC/DC Bag is standard. Col. Forbin's Ascent>Mockingbird is a crowd pleaser and features some interesting narration from Trey about the band's upcoming hiatus. Twist is nice and bluesy. Sand's jam is mostly ambient, with Trey playing in the background and it also sounds like he spends most of the jam on his keyboard. It's very different from present day Sands. Two covers end the show, A day in the Life and Emotional Rescue. Emotional Rescue included an odd interpretative dance from Trey and Mike. Check out the video of the encore at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_hKkQHOnOs . I rated this show as 4 stars because of the strength of the first set.

That Intro of Maze is just insane. It's just plain nasty.

Giving this a re-listen and re-watch 20 years later (yikes), a lot comes back to me about this weekend. My experience with these shows was that the first night was incredibly, unbelievably hot until Kid Rock showed up. Until that happened, there was energy like I've never felt at a show, so hot! The band was raging, I almost got scared. Then Kid Rock comes out and grabs his crotch and says crazy shit. What? In the moment, as horrible as it was, it was actually hilarious - about the hardest I've ever laughed at a Phish show, which is saying something. Then we all partied like crazy that night, and notably the band partied Kid Rock style. Again, yikes. We were still in our 20s, but dragging our asses into the second night was rough. Everyone was shredded, and the band was visibly and audibly ragged. It always amazed me that they chose this for a DVD release, because I remember it being kind of a slog with moments of brilliance., and everyone just exhausted. But they taped it for the internet, so I guess they had the video to release.

In any case, I know people love this show, and of course they were so good as a band during this time period, there are still some real highlights in this show. But listen closely, Trey is kind of just getting through it. There are a lot of rough edges. Walfredo gets a pass because they're all on the wrong instruments, but it's pretty lifeless, really. They get going somewhat in Maze and Mike's is pretty hot, but the Simple winds down very quickly. Esther is played fairly well, considering it had been a few years, though Trey flubs the end. Weekapaug is pretty fun. Again, their muscle memory at this point still makes them the world's best band, even asleep.

In the second set, Bag gets going pretty well and then what is still my only CFA>FFM, and musically it is pretty strong. Trey dials out by the very end of FFM, during my absolute favorite part, but it is incredibly hard, and he does nail the rest of the song, so that's fine. Some day I'll hear a better version live, god willing. Trey's explanation, during the narration, of the upcoming hiatus as something temporary definitely gave us all hope for the uncertain future of Phish, so everyone kind of felt better after that for basically the rest of the tour. The dream he talks about, you don't have to be Freud to figure out what that's about. Twist doesn't do much, and then we have the most unsatisfying Sand ever, during a time of some pretty tedious Sands. This is when Trey would dick around on his keyboard setup for ten minutes or so, and you couldn't really make out much of what he was doing, while the band and 15,000 people wait for him to play guitar again. He eventually gets back to the guitar, but just plays chords and ambient effects, and then it's over. There was just a lot of this energy flux in this last tour of 1.0. The crowd and the band would get excited, like a normal Phish show, and then everyone would remember that this might be the end, it might all be going away, and it would really dampen the mood. And Trey was just tired. Look at the video, he's tired. I'm so glad he's gotten help and is sober now. We are all so incredibly fortunate for that. Thanks for doing the work, Trey.

It was really fun to hear Emotional Rescue, and the Trey/Mike dual madness was and is some of their best non-musical improvisational work. So weird and fun. It did leave everything on a high note.

I remember that the energy this weekend for both nights was just like no other. As noted, the Vegas staff was pretty nonexistent, and it was a total free-for-all with a mix of "this is the end of Phish" hysteria. The opening of night one, we were in row one of the balcony, straight back. Amazing seats, really. I was jumping up and down so hard during Wilson, I don't know how I didn't pitch right over the balcony. The crowd was going fucking nuts. But night two definitely suffered from the excesses of night one, for band and audience.

Ah yes Live in Vegas. A bit odd to choose as for a concert DVD considering Trey's explanation of the then upcoming hiatus. I guess it shows how comfortable they were that it was not the end.

Walfredo is busted out for the opener. Has the novelty of this song worn off? I would say no. The odd lyrics, vacuum reference, instrument switching. It's all very Phish. The decision to open with a bust out and then play the recently unearthed Curtain With had to have been intentional for the webcast audience. It works well. The Curtain With proves itself to be back for good with this solid version. Maze has it's typical fury but with just a little extra thrown on top of this one. Roggae cools us down... or so it seems. This one is an all timer. Intricate and airy, the band deftly weaves in and out of each others melodic lines. It really gets out there in a way Roggae hasn't before. I Didn't Know comes in next and has reference to Joe C. as a nod to Kid Rock from the previous night. Mike's is played to it's trademark intensity but never quite coalesces into anything more. Simple sounds like it might become another floaty jam like Roggae but instead it fizzles away and Trey starts up Saw it Again. On the best nights, Saw it Again can be the full the release of pent up emotion. Here it serves more as a connecting part in Mike's groove because neither Mike's nor Simple went big. Either way, it's good to hear Esther busted out. Trey makes it through all but the last verse where he flubs the lyrics and instead gives up "she died. She's dead." It's a funny moment and get's a pass from me as he got every other word right in a song that has a lot of words. Weekapaug gets super funky to end the set. Weekapaug always delivers.

Timber starts the 2nd set with a bit of a gloomy jam. Melancholic notes from Trey and Mike really drive home the dark sound. AC/DC Bag at first looks like it might be a rare big one but stays inside it's structure. It does have cool false ending though. Forbin's is another surprise bust out. The rust shows a bit as this very is a little rough around the edges. As far as the narration, I did some research and concluded the hiatus was announced in an Entertainment Weekly cover story, but this being an age before social media I'm sure there were many in the audience unaware Phish was planning a break. Trey sounds a bit nervous, like he doesn't know how the crowd will react. When the audience cheers Trey laughs and makes a joke. Everyone's in a good mood. Once again this moment stands in stark contrast to the "won't be needing this anymore" moment from 8/11/04. The actual narration itself is about a Trey growing a long tooth and the earth becoming a raisin. At the end he concludes "Gamehendge is a state of mind." I can't think of a better way to send off 17 years of Phish. Mockingbird is played well and more adeptly than Forbin's. Despite Twist and Sand being jam vehicles neither go anywhere especially Sand, being one of the shortest versions since it's debut. Based on the last few versions it seems like they had run out of ideas for Sand. Given it's near complete absence from 2.0 this could be the case. ADITL brings the house down and Emotional Rescue closes the show with just one bust out. There's an odd duel/dance thing Mike and Trey do at the end of the song but it doesn't hold up on the audio. That was for the webcast.

This is a bit of a weird show. Strong in some parts, weak in others... and not the parts you'd expect. Jam of the show goes to Roggae. Weekapaug and Timber aren't too shabby neither.

I absolutely believe this show is criminally underrated. the playing is blissfully focused, while the setlist has superb diversity. After freshly rewatching this show righr now on youtube I can say its 5* no brainer! That mike song rips the jams are focused, and there are many rarities and bustouts and songs that became bust outs and rarities later on in phish history. Epic! Everything well played- sounds perfect to my ears and then some!

SET 1: Walfredo: Technical difficulties held this one up. Those weren’t the only difficulties the band and us had on this night. Not sure about y’all, but I was WORE OUT from the night before and the morning of this show. And I was still in my twenties. And I know I didn’t party as hard as the band. I digress. Super cool Walfredo and surely, I will never see another.

The Curtain With: Far from perfect but I loved it as I am sure most did. The band is showing the love to the folks at the show and those on the webcast too.

Maze: Wheeeeew buddy, look out man. This one will rip your head right off. Seriously, just smokes! Going into Page’s solo, man...that loop and effect to set it into motion – money in the bank. Evil. Trey’s rhythm playing really pushes Page to his best. Totally egging Page on. Trey slays his solo! All that tension he builds, especially before the first peak and then just combusts into it. Won't soon forget it.

Roggae: This chill tune was needed, perfect placement. Super annoying chompers showing up on this tape in Roggae, ugh. 4:50; incredible sounding effect. Trey and Mike playing off one another so well in this jam.

I Didn't Know: Just call me Joe C, lol

Mike's Song: No disrespect to the rest, but this Mike is all Trey. He shreds this version for 6 or so straight minutes, no second jam and it slams into… >

Simple: Not much here unfortunately, couple minutes of jam and melts nicely into… >

Saw It Again: After that Simple that went nowhere I was super pumped to hear this and thought this would be the perfect venue for it to finally go deep. No sir, not tonight unfortunately. Still scratch my head why this has only been jammed once, 12.12.97, seems like it would be a great jam vehicle?

Esther: Hadn’t seen this since Buffalo 10.19.96 so I was pumped. “She died, she’s dead” >

Weekapaug Groove: Trey, Mike and Fish have high energy in this jam, but Page sounds like he has low T, really low energy. This turns out into a really good jam that will be a standout for the evening.

First Set Summary: Lots and lots to revisit here, Maze, Roggae, Mike’s and Weekapaug. Awesome set with major highlights and rarities. I don’t know how they pulled it off as they had to be running on empty. Great, great set. I mean, that is a second set masquerading as a first set. I bet we could all agree to that.

SET 2: Timber (Jerry the Mule): Great opener! More dark energy. This jam has nice length to it, but it is quite mellow for the duration.

AC/DC Bag: Here is what we need to ramp up the energy! “Carry me down, WAAAAAAAAAAAAY DOWN!” Wish Trey would have peaked this a lot more, the peak was rather tepid. He was probably pre-occupied with how he would handle what was to come next…

Colonel Forbin's Ascent: Last time played was 8.7.98 Raleigh, 148 shows. I had not seen this since my first show 11.17.94 so I was over the moon and couldn’t wait for the narration. “And his blood shot eyes” and “And he dragged his WEARY s*** a** up the mountain” how appropriate for so many attendance!!! Trey definitely sounds nervous and emotional communicating about the hiatus. “Getting our home life together” hmmmm, interesting. >

Fly Famous Mockingbird: Standard.

Twist: Good solid jam and energy here >

Sand: Boring, band is weary. >

A Day in the Life: Huge bustout. Standard.

ENCORE: Emotional Rescue: Huge bustout. The antics after the song are fun.

Second set summary: Second longest show of the tour, second only to 9.17.00. Amazing they had enough in the tank to put this show together. Outside of the narration, there is nothing to come back to here in the second set. The first set definitely carries this show. Crazy two nights in Vegas. I was happy to be picking up stakes and moving on to Phoenix.