Phish on Jan. 2, 2003 - Hampton Coliseum, Hampton, VA

Upon their return from a two-year hiatus, Phish flipped the New Year's run to start with the Eve and play through the beginning of January.  Also for the first time for the holiday run, they did the bulk of it at Hampton Coliseum in Virginia.

After taking New Year's Day off, they come out swinging on Jan. 2 with "Chalk Dust Torture" and "Bathtub Gin" and right away, the 2.0 jamming style is cemented.  Straying way out of the confines of its typical jam for a solid four minutes in the middle, it is almost miraculous that the former somehow found its way to the ending of the song.  The latter stays more within the "Gin" realm, but combined they take up the first half-hour of the show.  Later in the set "Stash" provides another rager, and for those who think that it took until 3.0 for "Back on the Train" to become a surprisingly fun jam vehicle, look no further than this first version of 2.0.

The rest of the first set keeps it closer to the old formula with shorter, tighter songs from its 1989-1999 period, including a rocking ending with "Character Zero" (that starts with Trey not quite hitting all the right notes on his guitar); though the band does toss in one new tune - the title track to "Round Room" with all its Mike Gordon-led odd-time-signature rhythm.

Continuing to sprinkle new songs into the shows, the second set features the quiet "Thunderhead", but starts with the rocker "46 Days" that, like the previous set opener, runs so far away with itself that by the time they get nine minutes in, it has shed the skin of the actual song.  Somehwhere around the 14-minute mark it becomes almost an entirely different beast that eventually breaks the 20-minute mark with no return in sight.  So Trey swerves into the key of F and blasts into "Simple", which gets quiet after about seven minutes but still also manages to break 10, meaning that the first two songs once again ate up a half-hour.  

Elsewhere in the set "Limb By Limb" and (especially) "Run Like an Antelope" provided such raucous climaxes (not to mention the reliable I-IV of the encore - new song "Mexican Cousin") that my inclination to poop on the 2.0 era seems unfounded.  This is all quite a bit different from my memory of the era.  There is definitely a different vibe from where we left off in October of 2000, but this is still a band that is pushing boundaries and creating excitement.