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2018-07-17 Lake Tahoe Outdoor Arena at Harveys, Stateline, NV

Started by anthrax, July 18, 2018, 01:32:42 AM

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cactusfan

Back from Tahoe. Brain power still on low.
Wishing I was at the Gorge, but so it goes.

The Tahoe shows were better than I expected them to be. I was recalling being in Bend for those tour opening shows, and how sleepy and laid back they were. There was no sleepiness in Tahoe.

On the whole, I liked this first show better.

Right away with Free, Trey was playing with different sounds, and though at times during the set he seemed to get a little distracted looking for the right effect, a lot of slightly twisted and unusual jams or parts of jams resulted. Moma Dance is a great example, where at one point early in the jam Trey couldn't quite seem to find the sound he wanted, and was thus momentarily highly focused on his guitar as opposed to the rest of the band--which the band immediately picked up on, and collectively grabbed ahold of the song and pushed it hard into an unusual place into which Trey, having finally figured out how to make whatever sounds he wanted to make, threw himself, making for a strange and cool Moma jam.

Starting up Ghost right after that had me hoping they'd really take Ghost out there...which didn't quite happen, but it was still a nice jam.

The second set was on fire throughout, or so it seemed out there on the lake beneath the stars. Such a nice place to see a show.

Even if the jams weren't notably long, they felt very tight and focused and just consistently trippy enough. Plus a perfectly placed piss break with Bouncin. Who could ask for more? Plus I wore my Slave to the Traffic Light shirt, which shirt, since '03, has only failed to predict a Slave once or twice. I'm pretty sure it's psychic, this shirt.

Night two didn't feel as focused to me, with a lot of songs in there, and jams that didn't seem to take off into places quite as strange. However, I'll always be thrilled to hear a DWD -> WTU. Beautiful. And YEM. And LxL. Basically every song with a three letter acronym was a winner. And Ocelot. Extra fiery. And an excellent Theme in which, though I admit my brain was at the time filled with many colors, I'm pretty sure Trey actually nailed the jam-intro bit. A rare thing indeed. My god, imagine if he nailed the end of Taste some day soon? Are we due such miracles as these?

Clearly, these shows bode well for the tour. Given what I heard as experimentation with sounds the first night, I was a little sad they didn't push in that same way the second night, but they certainly don't sound rusty or cautious. Can't wait for SF and LA...

Caravan2001

Apologies if it is already in this thread but did anyone see that Phish FTR put cars, trucks, and buses  on the feed when they started Contact? I mean, really?