10/28/14 GREAT not good

My day was super mellow but productive - productive by catching up on sleep. Other than the standard one meal a day while on tour (a great, cheap, filling meal at Chucks local inner sunset diner) I didn't do much. Finally headed over to the venue to dump some tickets. I saw big crowds begin to gather....for the World Series viewing party at the civic center park across the street from the venue. The combining of giants fans and phish phans was destined to be an interesting commingling of people. Whenever phish crowds mix with non-phish crowds, I am always reminded of the fox show in Atlanta in 1994 when we walked out into the middle of Freaknik...the African American spring break that spiraled so out of control Atlanta eventually had to shut it down. That night I think the Freaknik people were more freaked out by the Phish folk than the other way around. Anyway, Lance and I went into the waterwheel event at 4:30. One of the things I love most about Phish is the community and it was nice to mingle at the event with some of the hardcores...the rail riders, early liners and people that like the ways posters look, feel and of course smell. We went for the poster and to help our crew secure great seats for the show and to help a good cause. Win win win. 

A general feeling of uneasiness, questioning and a WTF? has been building in the phish universe during this tour. While there have been a few good moments, for the most part Phish has been off of their game. Rumors of all types have been circulating...all stemming from the general consensus (shared by me) that this tour has been extremely lackluster musically. Phish is always fun and as the saying goes a bad day phishing is better then the best day working, however the number of jams up through BGCA1 that I would be listening to for the rest of my life have been few and far between and the number of complete sets and shows basically nil. I am a strong believer in the church of phish however even I had to temper my expectations for the rest of this tour. Perhaps that's a good thing because just when you think they don't have IT, Phish throws you a show like the one they played last night. 

Before the show even started I was resigned to the fact that there was going to be a game seven. If we were going to lose, I'm glad it was a blow out and I could not worry about the game and focus on the show. Or maybe I'm just rationalizing it and looking at the positives. As an aside, the Garcia Giants shirt has been retired from wearing for any future important Giant games. Going back to my game five Nectars shirt. Regardless, due to the nature of the game I was able to focus on the music...

Crowd control was a great opener, appropriate for the chaos outside and a nice reminder of the historical BGCA greatness of the 8/19/12 show that was also opened with CC. An actual Mikes Groove (technically it's only Mikes Groove if hydrogen is played but like Kleenex this term has become a genericised trademark) early in the show was fun and showed the band was mich tighter immediately than yesterday. A beautiful wingsuit that was stretched out a bit and Plasma, a TAB song making its second very strong performance in the Phish world. BTW, it would be nice to get some tunes from Overstep into the phish rotation other than Yarmouth Road. Ether or Faces would be great Phish tunes but I digress. The gumbo sanity combo was incredible. Gumbo has become super funky and this was no exception. Highlight of a great first set for me. Antelope w teases to close one of the better sets of the year, the rare first set that felt like a second set. 

When KDF started I thought they might be playing the show in reverse and now we were going to get the first set. Quickly into KDF those fears were squashed. KDF was a smoking version and taken out there. Mountains was a perfect landing spot - phish needs to expand the playlist for mellow landing spot songs. Fuego was jammed out a bit again and segued into Julius. Then the highlight of the tour for me this far....TWIST. A song that has a special meaning to me, this version was one for the record books. I am really looking forward to spinning this own again post tour (I don't purposefully listen to anything while I'm on tour until after the tour is over) and it will be on my rotation forever. Anyway it was an incredible version into a solid Jim and yet another beautiful hood that didn't have tension and release but melted away beautifully and peacefully. Loving cup is always a great encore for me and was a fun way to close the show and send the inmates onto the streets of San Francisco. 

Tonight Game 7 and Phish collide. I will be missing the first note at the start of a phish show for the first time I can ever remember - I will be watching the giants across the street. I will then go in and watch phish. We will then walk out to a city that is either celebrating a world championship or bummed out to have lost. Regardless of the outcome of the game I will walk out with a huge smile on my face because Phish still has IT and we are lucky to be part of this universe.