Any adventures in space were going to wait for another night as tonight was all about the full throttle full frontal assault on the senses, Phish set the stage on fire and CK5 handled the rest of it, from the opening Stealing Time that screamed out at me from straight out of the starting gate to the show-ending rock and roll orgasm that is Good Times Bad Times. Do you think that they watched the recently televised Kennedy Honors...:-wink/wink.

What this show might have missed in execution was trumped by sheer enthusiasm though they were musical highlights galore. Tube>Stash was a very nice one-two punch midway into the 1st set. Soon thereafter, Kill Devil Falls threatened to blow the roof off the remodeled Garden while Free took an even more pensive and reverential tone to these ears than usual. And the Wolfman's>Drummer Boy>Wolfman's was to die for and the way they dropped back into Wolfman's had many among us picking up our jaws off the ground.

2nd set was just one big long songgggggggg, without hearing the playback it sure felt like Tweezer was at least 20 plus minutes long and then the Maze was just stupid crazy insanely good. Then they totally Twisted MSG 'round before getting us swimming to the Theme. Fluffhead ended with a majestic rock and roll flourish and Bowie was especially sweet as the assembled collective on stage remembered that it was as much about the space in between the notes as much as it was about the notes themselves. And then the encore bought it all home, the yin of Bouncing to the yang of GTBT.

It all felt pretty special, especially for the 1st show of a four show run. God Bless 'em if they can sustain this level of intensity for another seven sets because I suspect that, if so, we'll all be a very happy bunch of Phans by the time all is said and done on Monday morning.

Peace,
Alex