I didn't get a chance to stream any of the show live but listened on live phish the day after.

This set II looks on paper to be the exact type of Phish I like: no-nonsense straightaway heavy hitters strung together in what seems to be a rather logical order. I read some of the reviews praising it but also saw some chatter about it being overrated, even from some .netters I respect a lot. Usually when this is the case I tend to lean towards the "overrated" side, so I lowered my expectations.

I'm happy to report that this second set, along with the first set highlights, is the stuff of a very above average show. Others can describe the jams better than I but I wanted to call particular attention to the Hood, which deconstructed the regular progression of the song in a VERY coherent way -- some people are dissing the start-stop towards the end, but I thought it was pretty smooth when they launch into the main closing theme afterwards (it caught Page by surprise but he quickly recovered). When they did it a second time I got the chills, and a rush of love for this band. The preceding experimentation in Hood was not one of those minor shifts just for shits before returning to Hood proper, but felt entirely natural, and when they returned to major they didn't opt right away for the main theme but instead took a slightly different but refreshing direction. What an A+ hood!

Other highlights: Petrichor, Tube (is it safe to say Tube jams are back for good? where's the talk of this being by far the best year for Tube since 2000?), the brief Golden Age jam (the ripcord out of it being the low point of the night, quickly made up for by the tweezer), Tweezer (gooey gooey goodness), the rest of set II (I know that's super lame but there was extra mustard just about everywhere. I swear Trey was hinting at a Hood reprise jam in Suzy of all places!)

I'm feeling a pretty sick rest of the tour.