The other day my brother and I bought three of the first five that were released on September 16th. I had already burnt the Sugarbush show from July, 16th of 1994 through www.gdlive.com. On the whole these shows were spectacular. There were moments of extraterrestrial spontaneity during each CD. The second disc of the 9-14-00 show contains a stellar chunk of music between the first and fourth songs. I know people who went to that show in September of 2000 at Six Flags Darien Lake. From their accounts, a huge down pour arrived during the first set. Trey later remarked that, “it’s a good thing we are under the tarp.” However, leave it to the boys from Vermont to integrate Mother Nature’s PMS into their performance. Phish accordingly opened the second set with a water theme. Drowned was first up. This was then followed by a twenty-five minute synthesizer romp, titled Darien Jam # 2 on the album. Phish then played their only consistent cover from the Talking Heads Halloween musical costume. Crossed Eyed and Painless was nicely played before delving into a shorted space titled Darien Jam#3. The theme of water would later appear in Prince Caspian, Loving Cup, and Driver.
The Binghamton 1995 show also contained some memorable moments. Perhaps the most impressive was its second set. An extended jam of Tweezer led to the Keyboard Cavalry. Much like the Acoustic Army, where all four members dawn acoustic guitars and start plucking out notes, the foursome started plucking the keys to compose the densely layered arrangement of this number. Then without skipping a beat, they jumped into the 1950’s doo-opp sound of Haley’s Comet. I listened to the 6/14/01 Japan show the least of the four. The first set opener of Carini was nice with its bizarre lyrics. This show contains many songs from the album Farmhouse, in addition to an incredible 2001. For the digital quality alone the shows are well worth the money.
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