It was too bad that Phish had already played "Petrichor" at their previous show because no night would have been better for the lyrics "and the rain came down" than Friday in Camden.
Gloria, Marshall, aLi, and I staked out a spot all the way in the back of the lawn section. Rumor had it that the sound on the lawn would be improved this year, thanks to Phish bringing some of its own speakers to help round out the usually thin sound back there.
But shortly after we got there, the skies opened up and a torrential storm erupted. It was so bad that an announcement was made encouraging everyone on the lawn to go inside the pavilion until it passed. We did so, but by then we were already soaked. The storm eventually did pass, but the show did not start until around 8:45 p.m.
We were wet and uncomfortable (especially my companions in their cotton clothing - whereas I wore my polyester running gear!) but we were ready to rock.
The first set had some well-played tunes with standard jams that were not mind blowing, but certainly effective to keep us dancing and grooving ("Set Your Soul Free", "Halfway to the Moon", "Birds of a Feather", "Wolfman's Brother"). "The Old Home Place" is a favorite of mine and aLi's from way back, "Horn" was nice to hear with Trey Anastasio hitting the ever-modulating solo perfectly, "Timber" is always fun to hear, and the lyrical forgetfulness made "Train Song" funny.
The big Set One highlights, though, were the rarities - my third "Wombat" (played only 17 times since its debut six years ago), which I had not seen since summer of 2014 but still makes me dance like a big ol' dancing fool; and "Strawberry Letter 23", the old Brothers Johnson tune debuted by Phish on Strawberry night of the Baker's Dozen run in 2017 and played only one other time since then - and the new "Drift While You're Sleeping", which debuted two months ago by Trey and Jon Fishman in their other band, Ghost of the Forest. Of all the songs from those shows, I did not expect this multipart, intricately composed and arranged epic to make it into the Phish repertoire (but, duh, that is not exactly strange territory for Phish), and I am glad it did, because those four simple yet profound lines in the gorgeous climax ("We move through stormy weather. We know our days are few. We dream and we struggle together; and love will carry us through") give me chills every time.
The six-song second set contained the big jams, like "No Men in No Man's Land", "Light" and "Mercury" (one of my favorite songs of 3.0, which had me worried at first because of the sloppy solo in the "tomb of the red queen" section). We also got some more newer tunes like the Kasvot Vaxt hit "We Are Come to Outlive Our Brains" and the GOTF song "About to Run" (not my favorite, but still good). The only song that was not from 3.0 in the set was the set-closing, heavy-climaxing (despite Fish missing the cue) "Run Like an Antelope".
"Sleeping Monkey" and a perfect "Quinn the Eskimo" provided an encore that left everyone in my crew (all of whom like different aspects of Phish) happy and satisfied. And ready for more.
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