Oh Phish, welcome back to Madison Square Garden... you were missed.

The expectations for 12/28 are usually lower. Its always seen as a "Warm up" show and could be missed.

Something tells me that trend just got broken tonight.

The vibe and theme of the 1st set was pretty old school. Lots of 1.0 tunes. (its literally just Sigma that isnt)The garden added another spectacular Bag to its resume in the 1st set and the rest of the set is well played and flows beautifully. My first ever sleep was cool to hear, gotta love getting a rare tune. Antelope, like usual, was an explosion of greatness. Right out of the gate the NYE run was going strong, the band in midseason form.

2nd set got nice and weird, as it should be. Oblivion Disease Simple Jibboo.. 4 fantastic choices there, all getting nice little jams. When theme came next, it perhaps felt a little out of place. But oh boy that thing went freaking deep ... it belonged right here in the meat of this show. Simple even made another appearance out of it. I was barely tripping but i definitely had to ask at a certain point if that mind bending jam was theme or simple at first....

Encore was a standard pick and the show ended earlier compared to years past i think, so i guess that would be my only nitpick. But holy balls that was such a fun show and I had a blast - I cannot wait to do it again tomorrow!

Set One: A-
Set Two: A-

Score: 4.45

I don’t say this lightly: last night reminded me exactly why I keep coming back. I was considering not attending initially (and breaking my streak of being at 100% of NYC shows since 12/31/19) as the past few 12/28’s I’ve been to have largely been the warm ups you might expect, but boy am I glad I didn’t miss the Sunday Phish! They just keep on surprising me, including a big bust out of Sleep, which I’ve been chasing for years!

From the jump, the room felt locked in. Great song choices and jams front to back first set. Can’t wait to relisten!!

Set two stretched out exactly when it needed to. My only slight criticism would be the weird aborting of disease. I thought they’d go the distance on that one but everything that followed was phenomenal. Can’t complain!!

What a start to run, can’t wait to see y’all back at the Garden for round 2 tonight!

12/28 has historically been the warmup show. I’m sure many people skipped tonight, but as the rule goes… never miss a Sunday show.

Buried Alive into AC/DC Bag had the crowd pumped up. Roggae, Rift, and Wolfman’s with some jamming were great 1.0 selections in the first set. Then… PYITE. Mid set. Hot damn. And they jam the intro too. Beautiful. Sigma and Taste were good. Trey wraps up Taste and takes his guitar off… “they can’t be done?” … picks up the acoustic guitar and then we get Sleep. Beautiful. I heard it once at SPAC ‘19. A welcome bustout. Antelope to close is classic. Truly an above average first set, especially for N1.

Set 2 begins with Oblivion, DWD, Simple and damn, it got weird! 40 mins of jamming led to a little Jibboo cool down that wasn’t really a cool down, and then… Theme. I thought this was the part of the night where they just stop jamming and rattle off 4 more jukebox songs. WRONG. Instead? Longest Theme ever. Jesus Christ. I need to listen back, but I was grooving in the moment. Back into simple for good measure, then throw in an ER for the vibes. Great show. Slave in the encore slot is as predictable as the sun coming up every morning. Glad they got it over with night 1.

TLDR: Shows like this are why we Phish. You never know when they’re going to happen, so that’s why you do the whole run. Fingers crossed they maintain this energy through the whole run.

So I built this little Phishow Rater over the summer on GitHub but haven’t been to a show since to use it. Last night was my first chance to do so. I was tired of guessing on show ratings so this was my attempt to get more precision. (It’s in beta so only the rating functionality works, haven’t had time to go back and build out the log in UX, etc…).

Show Rating: 3.65
Favorite Moment: Sleep on accoustic
First Set Highlight: Wolfman’s Punch
Second Set Highlight: Theme~>Simple

Surprised the wife with a night out away from the kids for the holidays. Didn’t have plans and was playing it all by ear. Had sushi in Fairfield and Tycho came on the sound system. Checked ticket prices at 6p and too high, finished my sashimi and ooey gooey chocolate cake and rechecked prices: well below face value. Scored 100 section fish side behind stage. Raced into Manhattan with the wife and parked across the street. Didn’t miss a lick of music because of the Sirius stream but entered during wolfmans. Vibe was loose with a Sunday kinda of love. No expectations, like the day had played out; I was just grateful to be listening to my favorite band at one of my favorite venues.

Aside from the bag and wolfmans, the acoustic sleep and raucous antelope were highlights even if they completely missed the landing after the crazy build up. Fever pitch. I sing Sleep (poorly) to my oldest at night so it was tender moment.

Set two’s oblivion opener set the stage for some deep dives into Phish staples. While the first two segues left something to be desired(disease to simple and simple to jiboo), prior to the abrupt transition into Simple, Trey appeared to be trying to get fish’s attention for like a full minute, trying to make eye contact. His shift to Simple got his attention for sure. Probably not what actually transpired on stage but that is how it looked from 111 row 15. While the transition left something to be desired, the Simple that ensued was made up for it. Crowd pleasing owing to its mention of saxophones and sky scrappers, it devolved into a charcuterie of sonic effects fitting of a holiday fest.

The next segue was equally as abrupt but landed in siren loop heaven with Jiboo, which became an after thought because of the subsequent Theme. This was THE Theme from Theme from the Bottom if there ever was one. The song melted to oblivion, cascaded though sonic landscapes fitting of the upside down and any grudges held by the not so smooth transitions and obvious flubs that abounded throughout the night were forgiven by the buttery slide back into simple. All Smiles! Alls well that ends simple.

Everything’s Right rounded things out, my son’s second favorite Phish song (after Ghost) brought more tenderness and we were ushered into the midtown evening with Slave.

I was excited to finally dust off the show rater and put it to good use to give me an accurate 3.65. Let me know if it works for you.