I firmly believe that each show needs to be viewed in context and expectation. This show is a perfect example. What more could you expect from a "jam" band 30+ years old on the day their new album was released? How about one expected to fill a finite time? You got a handful of known sprinkled in with newer songs. You got some nice jamming without scary 20 min beasts loaded with HOSE. You saw the band happy and a crowd obviously engaged. This is no classic. But if you saw this show, you know how excited you are for summer. The band is too.

Wow, what a fantastic show! I streamed it online as it was happening, and I could easily feel the excitement from the band and audience (they both were raging!) The audio was also crystal clear on my end.

No one expected the 46 days opener after not hearing it for so long, and it didn't take long for people to start bobbing along, when then led to a very upbeat and bouncy Undermind! At this point, I'm already hearing every note each member is playing. There's so much to listen to from these guys, you can tell they've been playing a lot because it feels like they left straight from MSG. Undermind sped up during its run, either on purpose or from sheer excitement. Either way, Fishman was having fun, just check out his drum fills!

Page introduced Halfway, which was was polished with his strong vocals and jazzy keyboard solo (there was also quite a sparkle in his eye). Then, BAM! CARINI! The audience flipped out! Trey absorbed the energy and gave what some folks on twitter called a late 90s-esque mini-jam. They would have kept playing if they could and it was obvious that they wanted to, but Fishman had to musically tell them to move on, so they brought it down to Devotion. In my opinion, it was a downer from coming out of Carini, but it will find its place in the tour sets.

555 was funky and sung strongly and enthusiastically by Mike. (This is the point where all the females swoon). I got lost in the tune as I did in Carini because it could have gone on for some time with how good and crazy it was getting. Then, finally: Twist. Little plinky moments in the beginning and then followed with exciting audience "Woo's." Trey kept on with the plinky-ness and played with the audience. Mike played some nice arpeggio bits, too. The jam then rose in volume and activity from all and the people danced and cheered. Then, the boys walked said thank you and walked off stage like they usually do, and the audience cheered and danced, I think one girl was crying, and a few people yelled out "Fuego." I thought they were going to play Fuego for the encore, but they did Character Zero instead, which was fine, it's just as fun. Everyone raged.

You could tell the band had such a great time by way they played. Trey was often smiling and jumping up and down as he always does. Even Mike smiled more than usual.

All in all, the show was an accurate representation of the collaborative process that the band has recently gone through for the album, but also for the whole time they've been together. They played as if they hadn't taken a break at all, (which really they haven't, we just haven't seen them so really, its our break) and everyone was happy! They let us know that this summer tour's going to be a fun one!

I haven't read others' opinions on this show, but I can say personally that I dug it. I've wondered why Trey would cut songs off so quickly when he could have jammed them before, and now I know---it's to produce something like this cool mini set. People who don't have the attention span to sit through a whole 20 minute jam can sit through 4 segued songs with improvised interludes. This is jamrock for the masses, and I dug it. 46 days was a great way to start off, Undermind kept up the funk...not quite sure what they're going for with Halfway to the Moon lately, but hey it's cool. Carini blew up, Devotion To a A Dream, 555, Twist...these are all solid. Well done, guys.

As I may have said before in reviews here, I'm convinced that the band is nearly as concerned (if not more) with the quality of their webcasts as they are with the live experience. They are trying to innovate by being a band that competes with baseball for viewers, which is pretty rad. I hope this widens Phish's audience somehow, but I doubt that they have that much room for expansion.

I also did the live broadcast, but I noticed the whole broadcast was not by phish because some camera angles were not ones Phish uses. The audio was also kind of weird, but I think the was just the very small space.
Now for the music, I was never expecting 46 Days as an opener but it was good. I got my Fuego LPs six days before the release so I new which ones I liked considering about 50% of the show was songs from Fuego. With an encore like Character Zero you know they are running out of time. Over all when you look at the set list its not bad for an hour!

Off the stream. First of all we knew this would only be a 60 minute time slot not even really a "full" set. I was most impressed that they opened up the setlist and didnt just play 95% fuego songs and to throw a carini in there really surprised me.

Twist is probably the stand out but every song was very well played and the band was having a great time. Also Devotion To a Dream worked out really well after a wild carini

Looked like a really fun set!