As I attempt to listen to every circulating Phish show, it's rare to come across a setlist on the .net without a review. So here's one for the archive.

Phish's first show in Oregon, a day after their first California run ended, on their first circumambulation of their home country. While Oregon can be Sometimes a Great Notion, maybe Phish aren't that big into Ken Kesey, as they've never yet played Timber Ho! in this state where the author set what some consider to be his mangum opus, centered around a logging family. But enough about what hasn't happened, let's look at what did happen on this Wednesday night state debut!

The song selection and setlist is pretty standard for its time. Golgi starts things off right. I Didn't Know follows, letting the crowd know that Phish means quirky business. The final chorus gets quiet following a short vacuum solo. The set continues with high energy and tight playing, with some extra rhythmic fun from Trey and Page in Foam. The first real improvisational highlight of the show comes next, as Tweezer patiently builds itself to a wailing finish. This song has really started hitting a great stride on this tour, with dense and elastic interplay between all four members, and this version is no exception. The once common, but becoming less so, Dinner and a Movie > Bouncing Around the Room pairing appears next for only the third time of 1991 (as opposed to its thirty or so renditions in 1990). Set 1 finishes with the always dependable house-shaking Mike's > Hydrogen > Groove, with Mike's featuring some spacious peaking, Hydrogen offering a cool down moment of beauty, before the typical Weekapaug shred-fest from Trey, played well on this night though not especially noteworthy.

Set II begins with the two-month old Chalkdust Torture, which still begins with Trey playing the verse chords in a quiet and kind of wanky way, and includes a relatively short but intense guitar solo section, augmented by good cymbal work from Fishman. Take the 'A' Train comes next, confusing the audience as to exactly what kind of music concert they are in fact attending on this particular evening, but the crowd claps along to Page's solo and cheers for Fish's with enthusiasm. Good but standard playing rides through the second set. I do love when Trey's first notes of The Landlady are some of his shreddiest. Fee has a nice harmonic outro that segues and continues into the Bowie intro, and the Bowie is awesome, getting a little quiet and building up to more machine gun Trey. The encore is also solid.

Honestly, I think the band is starting to sound slightly tired at this point in their tour, but that doesn't stop them from putting on a great show with definite highlights in Tweezer and Bowie. The .net rating currently sits at 3.333, and I'm happy to leave it right there.