As a student of the University of Vermont during the late 90's / early 2000's, there were a few guarantees. You were guaranteed to see naked people running through shows at Slade Hall. You were guaranteed to score a nice bag of weed in front of City Hall in the park. It was also guaranteed that Ween would play their halloween show in Burlington.
For those paying attention, you know what's up right now with Phish. For those not, they are in the mist of one of the best stretches of shows that they have put together since returning in 2009 from their break up in 2004.
While Phish is absolutely destroying the American Southeast right now with two back to back awesome shows that saw 2nd sets perfectly bookened by the best jams and energy of this tour, there's also this great video footage that was recently posted from their high energetic performance in LA at the Forum.
Patience has been a defining way to describe how Phish, and especially Trey, have played in recent years. A far cry from the early to mid-90's when it was often the Trey show with firey licks galore. While the latter can still take place, especially at those specific peak moments, the majortiy of the time jams have a lot more open space in front of them, leaving room for lots of interpretation. With Trey listening to and crafting a style similar to that of Jerry Garcia in preparation for the Fare Thee Well shows this past July, the patience has gotten even more prominent and more importantly, helped lead to this fantastic section of music from the third night of the Summer tour. Watch the official video below of the Twist > Light jam and it's advised to listen with headphones with your eyes closed.
Waking up the blog a bit with a quick but sweet post of the Cities slow groove with worm riding and all. Sorry all you non-Spotify users for the stream embed.
I've had a running playlist on Youtube of all the amazing footage of live Phish and it was getting to the point where it needed to be reorganized. I thought about bucketing by seasonal tour (winter, spring, summer, fall) but I eventually went with the eras (1.0, 2.0, 3.0). I"d love to further nest these playlists by seasonal tour but beggars can't be choosers.
Not too much of a shocker as the Vermont foursome have spent the past four years in the cold, dark depths of the northeast winter for their NYE bash so a trip south is a much deserved option. This will be their third time playing the America Airlines Arena for their NYE run with the first taking place during a dark period in the bands history in 2003 and the most recent taking place during a very happy time period in 2009, their comeback year.
