Alright, so I know i'm posting on here waaay after the fact, but had I known that "Icculus" was the infamous charlie dirksen of the review archive i would have checked this out sooner. I don't want to sound like a groupie here, but charlie was definitely THE man for finding out about which shows to b+p for in 1.0 and i read his stuff religiously back in the noobian days. After the feeling of ohmygod i went to a phish show and ohmygod i own a phish show wore off, those countless tweezer, yem, and mikes reviews were and invaluable resource.
I didn't follow 2.0 with anywhere near as much scrutiny; i was simply happy there were back. If they played alpine or deer creek i'd be there, but that was about the extent of it. Anyway, as the launching pad for the jams (and the jams themselves) changed starting in 97 or so, the relevancy of the standard "big 3" jam vehicles became somewhat anachronistic. Don't get me wrong, it was great to hear about the glorious 12-6-97 tweezer or 12-30-99 mikes, but the container for the jams had mutated by those years to include songs that would never be reviewed. Chalkdust could go 20 mins and halleys and 2001 were often the meat of the show. If they played mike's that show (after a 25 min halleys) it was often a de rigueur version because it hadn't been played in x number of shows.
I'm right there with ya charlie, in terms of obsessively ranking and categorizing. The irony of course is that the beast known as phish is antithetic to this whole idea. The mind-less mindfulness required of jamming denies conscious comparisons to previous works. Yet, without efforts to do so, the phish catalogue becomes analogous to the amount of data the senses input to the brain without any sort of selective filter. The massive amount of phish shows out there means this community needs unofficial archivist such as charlie to help steer the kids towards the hose.
I think now more than ever this is needed because there is a temporal disconnect between those hopping on in 3.0 and the arcs of phish throughout their career. Not to hate on miner, but this is exactly what i'm talking about. The guy makes a career of hyperbole, makes dick latvala look like an accountant with asperger's. Simply put, if you want to have ANY idea if a show is worth dloading you have to actually do it and then "liquidate." Instead of taping over the xls, the 3.0 method is trimming down to one or two songs on the ipod and handing over the burned show to the less discriminating fan.
I know i'm rambling here, but i swear i'll wrap it up (if anyone is even reading this...lol). I'm just giving charlie a right-on-man for doing this, i thought you dropped of the face of the phish-earth around 2001! The polarization of fans into the jaded vet and the eager noob is a dichotomy that has been around since at least 92-93 on (as many have pointed out), but is particularly acutely felt these days. Let's face it: the cause is a lack of jamming. It's the source of bitter contention and vitriolic pt rants-> name calling. We all love phish and we all love phish jams. When phish doesn't jam-immediate cognitive dissonance. <I love the band and will always stick with them> vs. <man i wish just once theyd launch from that launchpad again> rattles around in all but the most new of the new's brain.
Anyway, this might be futile, but this entire diatribe/manifesto has been aimed at getting kingmoron420 to review some of the jams that did not originate from the old big 3 jam songs. Ahem, island roses. Or god knows how many 2.0 jams that can come from anywhere. I love charlie's analytic style that cuts through the miner-style optimism unbound of the vast majority of responses out there to phish these days. Although you might not always agree with him, you always knew what you were getting- a dependable and focused review whose standard deviation was impressively small. If he really liked version x, for whatever reason, it meant that the score might have been inflated by like .5 and was never randomly uber-enthusiastic. But more than that, by now we know what shows to get or already have them all of 1.0. It was always a joy to read the review *as* you listened to the jam, it made me more focused in my attention and much more appreciative of what i was hearing. Especially when i disagreed with them. I guess this is a call to anyone who is somewhat discriminating to, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, review more songs from 97-2011.