I wasn't there and I watched the webcast and honestly I had a pretty miserable New Year's (not Phish related - just stuff that never gets resolved). Phish was definitely the high point for me on a low night. Even so, I'm probably not going to do this for New Year's again. I'll get the webcast and watch it another day.

Anyway, my impression was that the gag was probably a lot more fun in New York and I have no way of evaluating it objectively. The spectacle of the gags has to be enjoyed first-hand to be totally appreciated. That's just the way it is. As it goes, I'm not a golfer, but I thought it was still pretty funny. It definitely was not what I expected.

With respect to expectations, I definitely did not expect more than the night before musically (12/30 - especially the 2nd set - was one of the best shows of the year and probably in the top 20 for Phish 3.0).

12/31 first set felt a bit rushed and had two great moments for me: Character Zero (which SMOKED) and Alaska (which didn't hit Ocelot levels from the night before, but was at least pretty interesting). I'm pretty ho hum on the rest of set 1.

Set 2 had some good shit though. Ghost through 2001 was fine Phish and almost hit the level of the night before. It's sure nice to hear a good Piper. I would have been pretty happy to see that live. Yes, I would have enjoyed *more* jamming and some Type II stuff thrown in (Ghost seemed like it wanted to go there as did Piper), but time was limited by the upcoming set so there was a physical boundary. Oh well.

12/31 had some distinctive moments aside from the gag (I though Kung was pretty cool in the gag, Sand about average for Sand (good), and I thought the Fly Like an Eagle space jam could have put it right over the top - missed opportunity). Solid 3rd set.

In any case I totally enjoyed the run and I thought 12/31 was a good show. My rank would have been 12/30, 12/29, 12/28, 12/31 in the jamometer (best to worst), but they were all pretty decent shows. You are lucky if you were there.