Wow!
What an amazing show! What a crazy day!
After just getting my car tuned up the other day, We pack it up with 3 days worth of clothes and food to head down to NYC to our hotel. Picked the GF up from her last day teaching summer camp in Fairfield CT and head to Trader Joe's for last minute refreshments. Then the fun starts... Every instrument indicator light illuminates including the power steering, which locks, and the battery dies. I get a jump from a nice girl and her mom but it it hot AF and the car is still having issues. Eventually it gives out. AAA comes and does a battery test and tells me it's my alternator and not safe to drive to NYC or anywhere. We figure the best plan is to get AAA to tow us the 1.5 hours to my house and take another car. They eventually call us back to tell us that it's gonna be hours and they're contacting out to another company who doesn't take passengers.
New plan: Have them take the car (which shows up at midnight) and hop on the train from Fairfield. I won't get into my fear of trains stemming from a traumatic incident in Oakland. We finally get to Grand Central and hop in an Uber to our conveniently located hotel (28th & 7th). Then there's a SNAFU with check in. There's a problem with their system and none of my cards take. Well, I just used them so I know they work. I "politely" tell the woman after 20+ mins that we're running late and to just make us ket cards and we'll sort it out later. We'll be here 3 days and all our stuff will be upstairs. Great! We get upstairs and the room looks like shit. GF is upset; I'm not stoked either. But there's no time to fuss bc the show's starting!
We catch the opener on my phone in the hotel room. A fast Evening Song is a great opener for a 7 night run in NYC. The play Wave of Hope as we're walking. As we enter MSG they start playing Cities and it is loud and glorious. We decide to grab a quick bite since it's been since breakfast and then hit our seats. I thought the seats were going to suck be they were sect 108 and too close to the stage for good sight lines. I should know from seeing 62 other Phish shows at MSG already that there really are no bad seats. And these are actually great! Right on an aisle with plenty of room and pretty close. They play a ripping Free, sweet Brian and Robert and perfect Stash. I think I saw Trey smiling at my dance moves during that one, Lol!
The second set was one of the best I've seen. 6 songs, all great! More is a great set opener. Plasma and Simple were wild! MITM was a nice mellow point to take a breath before the most insane version of Split Open and Melt I've ever heard. This has been my favorite phish song for 248 shows since 7/26/92 at Big Birch. Last night's version was the most insane I have ever heard! GTBT was the perfect encore. SO much left on the table for the next 6 nights. IDK if we'll make all 7. but have our sights on 5 at least.
So after a gruelling day wrought with potential disasters, we glided through relatively unscathed and oh so happy to have finally made it to the show and our awesome seats. It would've been great to hear Train song or BOTT or Billy Breathes or Glide but there's still 6 more days! What an incredible show! That Split Open and Melt was one for the ages!!