Few things going on here that’s likely to skew the scoring. First of all, the availability of a perfectly mixed, multi-track recording within hours of a show that had a lot of online hyperbole drove the “legend” of this show pretty quickly. You didn’t have that in the 1.0/2.0 days of the band where you had to wait for cassettes/DATs/CDRs to enter the trading circles and be disseminated through the trading community which could take weeks or months for widespread opinions based on hearing it to form and be published. The turnaround time here is far faster and with a much younger, social media savvy audience who have access to far cleaner/clearer recordings and more mature self-publishing platforms. Also, long jams have always been (for some bizarre reason) a “hallmark of quality”, a notion amplified significantly ever since the “Tahoe Tweezer” and in this case the long jams were attributed to a couple of songs that have historically been short, composed and without any jamming whatsoever, instantly catapulting them into “best ever” status. Additionally, given that older fans have tended to complain that the band don’t take as many risks as they used to, any time they deviate from the norm its a cause for those fans to celebrate. And younger fans who never got to see some of the legendary 1.0 shows when they were (in my humble opinion) truly firing on all cylinders, taking risks and combining some of the best elements of prog, jambands, country, bluegrass and classic rock are experiencing current shows and having their own magical experiences that are no less special to them than mine were to me back in the day. But the platforms for sharing both music and opinions in a more organized way weren’t as mature back then as they are now so current shows are more likely to attract attention/voting/ranking than folks going back in time to listen to older shows and apply a critical eye towards them.
I’ve listened to some of the MSG run and the band is playing rather well. They don’t move me quite the same as the 1.0 era, but that says as much about me, my life and my ears as it does about them. They’re certainly not for everyone, and I still think most prog fans would be more musically impressed with Umphrey’s McGee or some of the next ten jambands like Tauk, Twiddle or Dopapod, but there’s still nothing quite like a Phish show. Certainly worth experiencing once. I've got 99 shows under my belt and have paused on going to any more at this point unless either of my kids are interested. I'm unlikely to have an experience like I had at the Capitol Theater in 92 or witness legendary shows like Glens Falls 10/31/94, The Island Tour 98 or MSG 12/29/97 again.
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