Tip to tail a s stellar show. My take on the set 3 & encore.

If anyone had money on Phish taking their plan for the NYE gag/balloon drop festivities during the rescheduled 4/22/22 show, well, they clearly lost a bet. Not a chance Phish would have dropped a billion balloons on and during a special three set evening on Earth Day.

That Earth Day set & encore was absolutely incredible. From the air-themed "floating in the blimp a lot" and water themed "splashing in the sea" moments of Free, things were elemental from the start. The two wave songs kept things in the water as phish turned MSG (and 20K+ of my best plankton friends) into an ocean with water falling in purely incredible patterns in front and behind the stage. Sea creatures were dancing so close to me that I reached out and kissed that whale with one of my confetti cannons. Waves brought elated tears to my eye. Once we left the sea, it was time to get back to land and test our dancing sea legs on the earth with a meaty and granular Sand. Enter the fog & laser beams from the prizefight-styled octagonal light fx rig that was hanging under the scoreboard. The beams were perfectly placed as they hit the base of the 200s section and the fog mixed with those lasers made for a beautiful effect as all the attendees kicked up a swarm of sandstorms with their dancemoves. Time to head back to the water for a little break to cool off. Lasers you are welcome to stick around, but this time you are no longer red/yellow sand colored. Now, you get to be green and blue. What's that, thousands of bubbles emanating from he prizefighter rig fractal bouncing off those lasers, you say? Bring it on! Seaweed blankets the band as we Melt among the seaweed and the slime. Out of body level Melt here to close the set. As the band takes their bows and the paired down stage lowers we are brought all to a recording of ice eerily cracking and our four troubadors literally fall on the ice and it cracks for their exit. We've got a few minutes of polar ice caps crackling and hissing to remind us that we're not leaving the ice, we're here till the lights come back up and we are left to our own devices with what to do to our planet Earth. Ice is an absolute heater and it doesn't disappoint one bit. Complete with a massive strawberry glazed sprinkled donut emerging behind the band, just to remind us that we all can't take ourselves too seriously. paper Confetti blasts from the cannons. As the band takes its final bow and exits the stage after taking us in and around our little third rock from the sun, we are left not with any walk out music at all. Instead, we are left to enter the real world with ambient noise.

As my crew and I walked into the venue and take our places in Sec 101 Row 13, we noticed there weren't any balloons (Earth Day) to drop. Some in my section and I noticed the fog and confetti cannons, but we obviously had no idea what was in store for the third set. At the end of it all, the waste left from the Earth Day set was minimal. They could have rented those dolphins and the whale. The bubbles were, well, just bubbles, and the paper was being swept up as we were leaving the Garden. I left with a renewed sense of appreciation for our planet and how much my favorite band can remind me of that appreciation.

Best band in all the land.