Alpine Valley 2

After sitting around the house all day basically waiting until it was time to go the weather on the lot was the best we had all tour long. It was almost Oregon-like since it was sunny and cool with a breeze. It was kind of strange to walk into a show completely satisfied and not caring what I heard or how it was played, but that was me on the final night of tour. To top it off we had 12th row seats (thanks Kenny) just to the right of Mike.

“Tweezer” was a great way to kick things off but the first real highlight of the set was my first ever “On Your Way Down.” This was obviously Phish’s tribute to Little Feat drummer Richie Hayward who had passed three days prior. The rest of the set one was pretty standard fare but I was still having a great time being so close to finish things off.

The second frame started with a bang in “Ghost” and that slid ever so nicely into “Theme.” Then out of nowhere came my final big treat of tour with my first “Big Black Furry Creature from Mars” in history. This one was not only unexpected but made up for the time I skipped 7/15/03 (one of my biggest Phish regrets). A mid-set “YEM” was also a welcome a surprise and “YEM > Piper > 2001” speaks for itself. The show kind of slowed down for me after that and we started walking up the hill when “Character Zero” ended.

We took in the four song encore from the top of the hill reminiscing about what a great run of shows we had just witnessed. Although some nights do stand out (AV1, Greek2 & Telluride2) what was most notable about this tour was how high the overall quality was from night to night. There was not a single show of the nine I saw that I would say was below average. Every night was good or great with Fishman being by far the most improved player. This bodes well for the upcoming Every-Ticket-Is-Impossible-To-Get-Fall-Tour. See you in Broomfield and Atlantic City…hopefully.