Onwards we go!!! Been wanting to do this for months, but didn't feel the time was right. Now that I've done a lot of 1.0 and need a break, as well as having finished 2012 recently, I feel the time is now to launch into 2021.

Crap, I don't think I've been this excited for some listening since maybe getting to fall 2018 or something.

Anywho, here we go....
Show #1 of 2021, I have played ONCE before. When it happenned, it was a pretty big deal and I thought it was worth giving it a listen for the hell of it at the time. I remember set 1 not doing much and set 2 being sloppy but having SICK jamming. Lets see how it goes.

7/28/21 Rogers, AR

Set 1

I Never Needed You Like This Before - The opening song nobody wanted but, the one we all needed. I think it's pretty cool and ballsy of them to open with a live debut. Also, I mean it's all right there in the title....This is a band that where's their stuff on their sleeves and I'm sure there was some sort of collective exhale once they got on stage and started rocking it all out. As for the song itself, yea it's a "simple rock song", but they CRUSH it!!! The guys come out guns a-blazing!! No slop in this version - sounds like they've been playing it forever!!! And it even reaches a pretty hot peak! Sure everyone was disappointed they didn't open with a massive 30 minute Tweezer or something, but jesus christ people, give this another listen. It friggin' SLAYS. Terrific opening, holy crap.

Tube - And as if to say, "it's ok, the oldies are still here" they launch into Tube next. Tube is slower than usual tonight. Hell, this one sounds downright sleepy. Wonder why their was such energy in the debut track only to have Tube sound barely awake....The mood of the track definitely helps with the vibe of the jam though. Trey and Page are both in sync with their sounds, wah pedals and wonky tones galore. Great part around 2:45 where Trey returns to a clean tone and just lays down this perfectly assembled melodic solo. One of those "eyes closed, let your fingers do the talking" kind of solos. All feeling, yo! By now, Tube doesn't feel sleepy and stilted anymore, it feels alive and confidently relaxed in the best way. There are several "windows" for them to go to the bluesy B section of the song, but they just steamroll right past them, slowly building the intensity of the jam bit by bit. By 5 minutes Page is ripping it up on piano and Page is still doing his melodic soloing, but the energy as absolutely getting hotter and hotter. This is friggin' terrific!!!! Then finally at almost 6 minutes they drop into the B section heavily and perfectly. Then into the last verse and out....Oh man, that Tube was a million times better than I expected. Wow, that was GREAT!!! Not an all-timer, but very much worth a listen or two for sure!!!

>Free - And without a hint of a break, Trey immediately fires up the Free chug and the boys rip into the song quickly like the studio version. Thank christ he and Page nail the main "lick" as well. :p Confidently relaxed, that is the vibe. Love the crowd going nuts during this. That must've been a terrific crowd to be a part of! Trey's first solo around 3 minutes is TASTY!!! A "clean" kind of overdrive sound totally smothered in glorious wah. Tasty as country friend chicken, my friends. And then into the "breakdown" section around 4 minutes. Gordo takes charge and is funking it the hell up. "Whoo!" from random crowd member... Page is pounding his piano during this before moving over to what, his electric piano? Then Trey takes the lead around 4:45 and returns to the "clean gritty wah" from earlier, just milking his play time for all it's worth. No rushing to Machine Gun land tonight. The whole band is just steamrolling this sucker tonight like a tank on the battlefield crushing everything in sight. Around 6:30 when the "breakdown" section does that downward modulation (or whatever you want to call it), things get nicely dark. Gordo comes more to the fore (though he's been up front in the mix, thankfully, so that's not hard to hear elsewhere), kicking in some thicker sounds. Page returns to pounding the piano and the crowd cheers during the harmonized vocals (I'm floating.....") And then the triumphant return to the main lick just tickles all the right spots and makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck!!! Fantastic!!
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So far, this is going WAY better than I remembered!!! The stuff played so far isn't "all timer" music or anything, but the sense of release and relief pervading the music and show so far is palpable. If this was any other show I don't think you could "feel" it this much. But with the context of everything surrounding the show/tour/lead up to it, it's terrific.
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And following a thank you from Trey....
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Bouncing Around the Room - So glad to have this in a good first set placement instead of 2/3 through the show like one of those ninja mood-killer Horse/Silent combos....Very nice version and the crowd is lapping it up. For the sake of not highlighting everything, I'll leave this one out, but it's very nice and I MUCH prefer this set placement....

46 Days - For some reason this feels like a weird slot for the song tonight (but that's probably just me). Right off the bat, like Tube, the boys waste no time getting down to business. Page jumps right on his, what is it a Fender Rhodes? Trey is doing minimalist plonking. The guys are taking their sweet-azz time again. This is like Tube 2.0 or something. Around 4 minutes Trey starts a melodic motif and by 5 minutes the guys have "adapted" to it. We are still firmly in Type I but they are just riding the hell out of this wave, soaking in it. Around 5:20, out of nowhere, a slow-build begins and the intensity makes a noticeable upwards shift. This feels prompted by Page. Trey is basically noodling around still, but it's very nice noodling! No fast runs or Machine Gun histrionics in this version. Page is driving this car for sure - just direct all attention to Page. And this is basically how the song rides itself out for the next while. All in all a nice version, but in the wake of other monster renditions, I hesitate to call it must-hear. It's a little too relaxed for a 46 Days - let's put it like that. Still very, very nice though!!!! It's a very enjoyable version, but at the same time you won't be seeking this one out, I'm sure.
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Limb By Limb - Very nice energy on this one. The vibe of the set so far definitely accents Limb tonight! Confidently relaxed....When the song finally "busts open" around 3:30, Trey is unfortunately still doing not enough...Oh boy, please don't let that be a theme of his this year Page is doing beautiful playing and Fishman is going crazy in a "let me play every single fill I can" kind of way. :p Trey is picking very delicately, making this sound akin to a mystical Yes track at points, lol. Very friggin' nice, though, I tell you what!!! Around 5 minutes Trey gets some mojo and starts to increase the intensity of his playing. Page is still being Mr. MVP in the background, but the jam is slowly building in heat, that's for sure. By 6:30 we have reached some sort of peak. Trey is giving generous helpings of his patented "melodic lead" casserole and everyone else is doing what they do best. By about 7:20 the vocals return and the song winds itself down. Very nice version on the whole but suffered from the same "unrealized potential" thing as 46 Days. It was good, but felt very much like a "warm up" rendition for a beast to come down the line, ya know? Totally forgivable given the context of the show and it was still a great listen on the whole!!!
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Wolfman's Brother - Very nice version of the song! I've never heard Gordo singing "You shouldn't have took more than you gave" before!!!!! Right at 3:50 the song shifts perfectly into the jam like they flipped a switch. Page and Trey sync up at first before Trey breaks loose and starts doing some proper soloing of his own. Good golly this is friggin' FUNKY!!!!! But pretty quickly Trey returns to "vamping", taking his time again. Page is doing his wah pedal stuff on the keys and it's gloriously funky!!! At 5:30 Page lays off the wah and starts hamming it up on straight piano. Fishman picks up and they slowly increase the tempo a little bit. Then Trey starts playing around with HIS autowah/octave sound effects!!!! By 6:20 we are into a stomping boogie as I'll call it tonight!!!! The guys are just amping it up more and more - hell this is the hottest thing in the show so far since probably the opening I Never Needed!!! Check out Page's choice soloing around 7 minutes. Terrific. Trey is still in "not sure what to play"-land, but slowly he is making himself heard with little inserts and fills. Around 8 minutes the boys all sync up on another repeating motif yet again and ride it out for a bit. Ultra friggin' funky!!! But by 8:30 Trey abandons this and starts doing some trilling before holding a Divided Sky note for 30 seconds!!! The crowd goes nuts and the boys are legitimately rocking out FINALLY!!!!! By 9:15 the headbanging commences!!! Trey is ripping it up finally! Hell, this sounds more like 46 Days than 46 Days did!!!!! Fantastic Wolfman!!!!! Definitely THE highlight of the set so far!!!!!! Wow!!! KILLER!!!
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NICU - Awkward sounding tonight, Trey starts the lick and takes a bit to sync up with everyone. The whole thing is just awkward. Trey has trouble with the lick, ala Sugar Shack and even Page has some slip ups. The crowd is absolutely eating it up though so that counts for something. But then "Play it Leo, play it!!!!" and Page tears into the hottest, sickest solo he's torn all night. Terrific solo spot! On the whole a weak version, but I'm gonna say it's worth it just to hear Page rip it up for 30 glorious seconds.
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Drift While You're Sleeping - I'm the only fan that loves this song so I guess I gotta be the one to go to bat for it again. After a brief false start, the guys launch into it rather powerfully. Right from the get-go it sounds full of intent, not "weak" like NICU did. Hard to explain but you can hear it. It's powerful tonight! The composed section is just majestically powerful in the best way tonight. The guys are just nailing this version!!!! Seriously. "And we move, through stormy weather!!" Holy hell, the guys just POUNDING THE CRAP out of this section, it raises the hair on my arms. The guys are giving us the message we need, whether we like it or not. F the song, it's about the meaning tonight. "We dream and we struggle together, and love and will carry us through". AMEN BROTHERS!!! Best version ever????!!! Possibly!!! An A+ Drift if ever there was one!!!!!!
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All in all, that set was highly enjoyable! Terrific opening and closing cuts (whether you like the songs or not, the renditions were terrific!!) and a glorious Wolfman with a side of Tube and Free on top. Some not-so-amazing-but-still-very-nice versions in between and you have a pretty darn good first set for a band that hadn't played in a year and a half.
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WAY better set than I expected!!!!!! Really, NICU was the only true "let down" of the whole thing!!! Great stuff.

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Set 2

Down With Disease - I have a bad memory of this being one of the worst Diseases I'd ever heard. The song portion is definitely up there - there is like no...energy at all. A sleepy Disease...WTF. C'mon, Trey....Seriously, he's playing it SO half-assed that it's ridiculous. Why even bother....Trey is sloppy and half asleep, I swear. This is slower than the studio version, but at least that's chunky as a mother.... This is Rockabye-bed-time Disease for babies. I am absolutely being too harsh on this, but c'mon, don't give me this and then expect a raving review. I accept Phish these days, but lets not be dumb about things. Ok, all that being said, by about the 4 minute mark, things finally sync up and get quite cookin'. Thank god. Fishman is tearing it up on this version. Fills galore! The initial jamming is some nicely melodic Type I as seen in set I. They ride this out for several nothing-special minutes before dropping into Type II deep space right at the 9 minute mark. Outer space keyboards and ambient funk droning etc. Things got DARK like someone just turned off the light switch. OUTERSPACE KEYBOARD STAR TREK LAND. Trey is still doing absolutely freaking nothing (COME ON MAN, WAKE THE HELL UP!) and Page is surely getting tired of carrying the weight of the song on his back at this point....Around 12 minutes Trey returns to the party and the jam gets kinda nasty in a good way. Page returns to piano and we enter the "building to a peak" portion of the jam. Just rocking the F out. But instead they "bypass" this and enter a spastic kind of "fast funk" zone, ala a good Birds of a Feather or something. Very cool! This goes for a while before they turn the corner into Simple.
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If that was 2012, that would be one of the jams of the year. But because it is 2021 it has massive shoes to fill that it doesn't quite do, but it makes a damn good effort of trying!!! Once the abysmal reading of Disease in the rearview mirror, the jam slowly takes shape and evolves and by the end you don't want it to stop!! It took time to get going, but they really got to a point where it had potential to go balls-out!!! And instead Trey ripcords us into Simple (which thankfully they QUICKLY jump into without a trainwreck!!!!). I'd say this is very much worth a listen for the jam. It's a very up and down version but the improv gets going for sure by the end!!!
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>Simple - And the crowd ROARS their approval!!!! Blissfully amazing as expected, until we turn the first major corner around 5:30. The guys hit upon a chord and instead of going to the next chord in the sequence, they just ride the note out for infinity. Things start drifting slowly into ambient bliss. Soon, things start getting weird. Page is doing double duty on Piano and keyboards/synth. Trey is picking out weird notes and Fishman is hitting weird percussion. We are still in some weird bliss zone, but things have gone....askew. By 10:30, Page is over on the Clav and the whole band is just riding this really odd wave of....I don't even know what the hell you would call this jam. Great moment at 11:20 where they all synch up on a repeating chord and start growing things into a darker area, ala Carini. But Trey quickly axes the growing darkness, opting instead to continue playing around with his octave pedal or whatever. Page says F that and starts inserting his blaring synths, forcing the guys to go dark!!! By 12:20 we are in a very uncomfortable soundscape. This is starting to sound like something coming out of a Melt or something. I'm having a very hard time keeping beat anymore!!! And by this point Trey has started messing with his Robot sounds anyways!!! Things just begin melting down in a gloriously weird miasma of "what the F is going on" insanity. I definitely enjoyed the Disease jam more, but this is pretty darn unique!!! Totally unsettling and STRANGE!!!!! It's worthy of it's jam chart placement, let's put it like that :p
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>Fuego - Trey sees his opening and starts the Fuego riffing without the Simple jam stopping. Not totally smooth but A+ for effort. More of that, please! And I tell you what, the friggin Robot noises are like the icing on this evil cake. Son of Carini or something!!! And then the guys just BLAST into the song!!! It's not totally smooth - at all - but the intent is there and everyone is riding this wild carnival ride!!!! The song absolutely LIFTS off, I swear. This version is so much FUN!!!! It's a BLAST!!!! And by the end, it's just Trey ripping it up, the band going nuts and everyone having a blast. Awesome Fuego!!!
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>Plasma - BOO! BAD SETLIST CALL, TREY!!!! Crap, Fuego was literally in deep space about to go ballistic and he just YANKS the rug out sending us to happy town instead.....Thankfully they waste no time getting down to business, creating a slightly dark and quiet vibe in which Trey is just laying down all kinds of nice melodic lead lines while Page is killing it on his own wah pedal. The jam builds a really, REALLY nice head of steam and the boys sound the most cohesive that they have for the entire set so far!!! It's like the "rust" has finally been shaken off!! Around 5:40 things take a cool turn for a bit with Page really hammering it away and Trey doing this "swishy" rhythm for a bit. The jam become like a Twist on steroids or something. This is terrific. Around 7:45 as the jam is about the lift off in a big way, Trey ripcords us again, roughly, back into the Plasma them and ends the jam cold. C'MON MAN. STOP THAT! CUT IT OUT!
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>Runaway Jim/Weekapaug Groove - Jim is Jim. Crowd loves it. But then at 2:30 Trey launches into a genuine Weekapaug jam and the crowd friggin ERUPTS!!! Then they start singing Weekapaug!! YES! LETS GET IT!!! HELL YEA!!! THIS IS NO TEASE. THIS IS PAUG! But at about 3:30 they return back to the Jim jam so perfectly. Oh man, this is a BLAST! At 5:30, the jam dissolves into a blissful whisper. Type II ambience, baby! And they ride it out for a minute like one of those patented 2012 Ambient Outro jams....Hell, this woulda been the perfect moment to launch into Theme, and I swear Page is signalling it there for a bit.
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>Rift - Ripcord into Rift. NO. BAD TREY! Thankfully this is a fine version for 3.0. Not flawless, but neither is it butchered to hell or played at a whisper. And ya know what? That ripcord sucked but I actually quite like the setlist placement of it! Check out Page's GLORIOUS solo around 3:20!!!!!! When all is said and done this actually end up being a very nice version! I'm not gonna call it highlight-worthy, but it's a fine Rift!!!
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If I Could - Holy moly, how perfect, eh? Gorgeous version and welcome as always. Great placement too.
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>Rise/Come Together - Another one where I don't understand the haters. Perfect set placement out of If I Could, seriously. Also, how the hell did you expect them to NOT play it in their "comeback" show? Seriously, folks. :p Freaking awesome version. Trey is going insane with his trills and the whole band is just exploding with energy. Terrific!!!
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Slave to the Traffic Light - Ah yes, my favorite late-show set killer (besides Harry Hood)......Dang it.... Ok, the main composition is excellently performed. Great version there. What are those inappropriate sound effects happenning during the quiet part? Are those the infamous Fishman samples? Yea, those suck. That being said, this Slave is absolutely terrific. Around 6 minutes there is a glorious part where - Fishman samples aside - everything clicks and Trey holds the longest note I've ever heard (no joke, it's gotta last a minute or more!!!). Things start building and we are off to the races. There isn't much else to say. Speaking as a non-fan of Slave, this was an outstanding version. Absolutely must-hear!!!! Seriously, good enough for me to almost say it's the peak of the whole show!!!! OUTSTANDING! A+!!!!
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Say It To Me SANTOS - Santos is Santos. Great version but nothing special (for the sake of not highlighting everything). Ends the show on a total party note. Great stuff!
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All in all...wow! That was a great listen, for real!!! The show was pretty hit or miss on the execution but you can hear the potential there. Some terrific parts and versions, some not-so-amazing ones. This show had a special feeling to it and it was a better listen than my review might make it out to be. I think the 3.2 rating on .NET is rather low, but I'd feel pretty good about giving it like a 3.8. In other words, lots of potential and room to grow