, attached to 1993-02-11

Review by Penn42

Penn42 **This is my eighth of (hopefully) 71 reviews as I listen to the entire winter/spring '93 tour.**

This show features the same opening trio as three nights prior. Suzy > Buried Alive > Poor Heart is such a good set of songs to open with. Stash is a little anticlimactic but Fluffhead and Llama are both very well played. Phish was never about 100% accuracy and precision, attributes this Fluff does not have. However, Fluff does, mistakes and all, flow effortlessly. Like the music is just pouring out of them with minimal thought. Great version. The Bowie intro is actually pretty engaging. They continue a little harmonic vamp from the preceding Lawn Boy over Fishman's hi-hat and then intersperse all the secret language into the vamp. I'm not particularly fond of many Bowie intro's, but this one was good. The song and jam itself are good too.

The first Landlady opener of '93 starts off set two in high gear. So far this tour Tweezer/YEM and a Mike's Groove have alternated every other show as the second set focal points. Personally, at this point in their career, I'm not a huge fan of what they were doing with Mike's Song. On top of that Tweezer and YEM vs. Mike's Groove is pretty lopsided. Subsequently, the Mike's Groove nights tend to fall pretty flat for me. The noodle-y wailing jams in Mike's aren't very entertaining and the second sets always suffer because of them.

It's obvious by the purposefulness of the aforementioned song rotations that they are starting to put some thought into distinguishing the second set from the first. Up through '92 first and second sets were not as distinct as they were at other points in their career. Some songs generally stayed in one or the other, but the jamming, which was staying pretty conservative, not heading super out yet, was evenly dispersed throughout the show. It seems that this tour they're starting to formulate a more concrete jamming plan for each show. Not to say they planned what and when they would jam, but the structure of the show is starting to take a different form with set two featuring these major players alternating on a nightly basis. The second set being the jammier set would take hold pretty firmly by August '93 and stay that way up until sometime in '97 when the lines got much more blurred again.

All that is to say that I think it's odd to pair Tweezer and YEM on the same night and then let Mike's Groove try to hold the set's weight all by itself. It doesn't help that I don't think Mike's Song has gotten super awesome yet, but everything is a work in progress, right?

Mound, The Lizards, Cavern, and Bold as Love are all fine. To finish out the show they got the crowd super quiet for the best singing of Amazing Grace yet.

This show is pretty pedestrian, but decently constructed and played. Seek out the Fluffhead >>> Bowie.


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