The show started in traditional 3.0 Father's Day fashion, with all the band members' kids onstage in a tub during "Brother", before kicking into the dog-themed duo of "Runaway Jim" and "Dogs Stole Things". It was another set that leaned heavily on the oldies with the near-perfect rendition of the decade-old epic "Walls of the Cave" being the newest among a set of songs that otherwise dated between the 1980s and 1997.
If one of Trey's fears when he broke up the band in 2004 was that they would become a nostalgia act, one listen to a set like this proves that playing old songs does not necessarily equate to nostalgia. When songs like "NICU" and "Foam" are played this well, they maintain their freshness. And there was nothing stale to be found in the dirty funk of "Boogie On Reggae Woman" or the far out jamming in "Timber". The audience chanted along "Wilson" and sang out the coda to "Character Zero" so enthusiastically, I think the latter is more popular now than it was in 1996.
But it was "Fluffhead" that destroyed the crowd. The song that died with the hiatus of 2000-02 and was reborn like a phoenix from the ashes of the 2004-2009 breakup, was played with the kind of precision that negated the 33-year-old Trey's claim in the movie 'Bittersweet Motel' that he didn't care if he missed some changes in a song and that the energy was more important. The wiser, well-rehearsed 47-year-old professional Trey knows that he can have both. So when the triumphant climax comes, it is that much more powerful. It's why you can't get an audience to leap with exuberance by merely playing those four big chords at the end. It is the intricately winding journey to get there that makes the release what it is.
After starting magnificently with the frequent second set opener "Drowned", Phish went back to recent fun of placement switching. No longer can you expect "2001" to come an hour into the set, "Reba" to be a first set monster jam, "Chalk Dust Torture" to be a set opener or "Bug" to be a second set closer. Instead they were mixed around this set like an iPod on shuffle and (unlike the previous night's "Backwards Down the Number Line" misplacement) none the worse for it.
The biggest surprises were "Silent in the Morning" without its usual predecessor "The Horse" (which was aborted Saturday night) and a set-closing "Down with Disease" which, lyrically, makes a hell of a lot more sense there ("This has all been wonderful, but now I'm on my way") than in its typical set-opening slot. And they made sure to leave us with an incredible jam on that song that actually came around to the ending. Most of the great "Disease" jams end up leaving the song unfinished.
That 2011 feeling of getting in and getting out, leaving little space for stretching out, carried over in last night's 3:56 "Prince Caspian" and 5:15 "Roses Are Free", but those were well-balanced by the expansive jams elsewhere.
We in the crowd tried to guess what the encore would be - someone near me said "Bold as Love", I called "Shine a Light" - but I am sure that none of the thousands in attendance could have predicted "Gotta Jibboo", a song that had not been played as an encore since its 2000 heyday when, interestingly enough, it usually was played as a set opener. It felt odd, but the groove was good and we danced some more, knowing it could not end there - that a bigger, more powerful song would come.
"Quinn" did the job excellently and we all left happy. Everywhere around me in the long walk out of the venue, people were talking about their plans for the rest of the tour. It felt good to finish such an epic weekend knowing there is more to come.
So yes, this has all been wonderful but now I'm on my way...to Jones Beach and the SPAC. See you there!
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