Worst show ever.

@Sprachtor said:

Worst show ever.

weren't you at 12/30/11?

How original yemfetish, just like your threads.

Can we use this thread as yet another reason why the .net ratings system should be overhauled?

I agree the ratings system needs to have 20x more points of discrimination. Asking a fanbase like us to spot every show as a 1-5 is just not enough options.

That said, 12/29 at a 3.0 would be generous. 2.0 might be a little low.

Which, of course, is not to say it was not insanely fun to be there. Because it was.

@ProfJibboo said:

I just don't see why someone can't give the show a 3 and still have an awesome time. I spent the second set dancing right next to @Jimmymac03 and I didn't stop dancing for a minute.

This is true. It was full on rage and I loved every second of this show in person. I get why people are down on it but TBH I have also loved it listening back. I do think it was the "weakest" night of the run, but being able to say that is such a good thing cause it was a very fun show.

@me_no_are_no_nice_guy said:

benhaterly

A 2's a 2. Must be a hater. I'd probably put the 30th at a 4.

It's difficult to rate a show from just the first experience. Listening to each show a few times makes you realize some of the versions were way better than you remembered.
There were portions of 12/29 that were exceptional.
I won't have a final opinion until I listen to each show at least two more times.

I guess I fall into the category of a "non-discerning" listener. For one, I don't have the time to spin each show several rounds through and have little time, in fact, for seeing shows at all. I knew what I was in for: Saturday night madness at MSG. Yeah, the crowd exploded at irregular intervals, the Waves wasn't the Bethel soundcheck and I guess things can't be absolutely as perfect as we would like them to be 100% of the time.

Conclusion? I felt blessed to hear Golden Age melt into Waves, a song I've wanted to hear since it's debut. That was a joy in and of itself. Set and setting folks. From the East GA railing, dancing these old bones, this was a great show. Bringing loved ones along who aren't die-hards, this was actually a good show for them. Set and setting. We all had a blast, and it was a great way to close out my 25th year of seeing these guys. No complaints.

Was def a great show.. Makes me excited for 2013

@TheEmu I feel Long Beach should be on that list.

You guys take this stuff way too seriously. What if the show is rated exactly how everyone wanted to rate it? Why do you care so much if other people like a show more than you do?

It's music. It's f***ing mysterious why our brains like it or don't like it. Stop trying to quantify it.

the bag, halleys, limb, gin, golden age-> waves, bug, 46 days, and coil were all played well and worth a second listen...the show did lack flow and imo had a odd set-list construction...but it did have some great peaks and tight playing throughout...i'd give it a 3 star and be ok with it.

Sure, better than last year's MSG run but I don't think they hang with the highlights of this past summer.

The Dick's run was an embarrassment of riches, and the Cincy Twist and the SPAC Sally and Piper were all-time great jams.

Don't think we got anything that is top 10 2012 out this run.

Any thoughts?

@me_no_are_no_nice_guy said:

benhaterly

Ben Hatley-- why do you hate Phish?

WARNING: THIS IS THE VERY DEFINITION OF TL;DR. DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU WANT TO SEE ME BLATHER ABOUT BIG CYPRESS AND PROBABLY MAKE AN ASS OF MYSELF. THANK YOU IN ADVANCE.

@Slothberries,

Thanks for the kind words. Let me try to elaborate a bit on my comment about Big Cypress (and, I suppose, provide the review of 12/31/99 nobody was asking for):

As an actual *event*, there is literally no way to overrate or properly sum up what Big Cypress means. Even my n00by self has a reasonable idea of what it meant to Phish themselves and the Phish community. How could I not? It's both a symbolic ending to the late-90s minimalist style and a symbolic ending to 1.0 itself; it seems pretty clear that the psychic effects of having played that show (along with whatever the hell else was going on within the group in that last year), if not outright necessitated the hiatus, helped speed it along mightily. And it's a show absolutely without comparison in Phish's catalog (as @waxbanks has pointed out in the past), nine hours of music, six and a half in one set, much of it at a very high level, on the last day of the millennium (well, not really, but let's go with that for argument's sake), in as dramatic a location as you could choose for a show on said final day, in front of as large a crowd as Phish has ever played for. Three of the four members of Phish state that it's their all-time favorite show (or the best show they ever played, I don't remember which). It's a monumental, epochal show. I couldn't dispute that, nor am I foolish enough to try.

As a *show on tape*...well...

It's easily in the 99th percentile of Phish shows, even on tape. I think that's pretty safe to say. Some of the jams are among the most beloved of all Phish jams, that's pretty easy to say as well. I personally think Sand -> Quadrophonic Topplings is the jam of the year (although the 9/18 Boogie On, 12/7 Halley's, and 12/11 Ghost might have something to say about that). It's a great show. Even that's not in dispute.

And yet...

People often say you can't stack an ordinary show (on tape) against Cypress because its length and musical quality means that no show can even come close to it. The way I see it, though, you can't stack an ordinary show (on tape) against Cypress because ordinary shows are, in general, a much more pleasurable *listening experience* than Big Cypress. Not to speak for anyone else, but I often feel like when people say their favorite show is Cypress, what they really mean is their favorite show is a certain chunk of the NINE F-ING HOURS of music they played that night. I mean, there's a reason why people tend to save Cypress for long car trips or plane flights or whatever the hell else. It's a long goddamn show, and listening to it is tantamount to making a commitment. Nine hours of ANYTHING generally ends up being an ordeal more than anything else, even if that anything is your favorite thing ever. I've sat through the Godfather saga, all three original Star Wars movies, and even a marathon of The Wire - by the end of all three, I was mentally exhausted plain and simple. It's like a mixtape - the best thing about a mixtape is that because you're not bound to listen to it all the way through, you can pick and choose the best of what is generally the best. And that's how I think about Cypress - one of the best Phish mixtapes ever made. I don't think of it as a show, and certainly not a cohesive piece of music.

This is clearly my own bias (but then isn't this all?), but I tend to gravitate towards sets that feel like one piece of music, in which every song blends together into one whole statement, like there was no other way that set could have gone except for the way that it did. 6/14/00 II does that. 12/6/97 does that (it's the prototypical example). Both sets of 8/31/12 do that. Cypress, IMO, does not do that. How could it? It's nine damn hours long! There's a host of great music being played, and also a lot of breathers as well - to get setlist-nerdy, I see a lot of commas and not a lot of arrows. And God knows they shouldn't be penalized for taking the occasional rest during a six and a half hour set, but when I'm listening on tape I hear a really good jam and then My Soul or Heavy Things, rinse and repeat. There's no rinse and repeat in Fukuoka or 12/11/99 II.

And, as great as a lot of the jamming in 12/31/99 is, a LOT of that jamming tends to explore avenues that they explored hours ago in the very same set, and more or less to the same effect. That's not me saying the show all sounds the same (it rather obviously doesn't), but me saying enough of it DOES sound the same that I find myself occasionally losing interest while listening, which doesn't happen when I listen to Drum Logos or 11/17/97 or 8/31/12. And laugh at me for using 8/31/12 as an example if you want, but even the most ardent "3.0 will never come close to 1.0" fan will admit 8/31/12 is one of 3.0's highlights, so I feel comfortable doing so.

Actually, let's use that as a perfect counterexample. 8/31/12 has four long jams as a result of a fixed 15-song setlist, which necessitated some songs to be stretched out. But all four of those jams have distinct qualities and are identifiable as their own high-quality jam (which is why "best jam of 2012" lists tend to have all 4 listed in varying ranks). Big Cypress has probably 3 times as many long jams, but those jams are long because they have to kill time until the sun rises, and often sound like they're killing time until the sun rises. Sure, the quality is high throughout, but high-quality soporific music is still soporific music, at the end of the day. And yeah, I've said before that I'll often skip songs and head right to the jams, but with my all-time favorite sets I feel no need to do that, because even the usually skippable songs feel like part of the whole; with Cypress, it feels like lots of great parts with no whole. There's no there there, as Gertrude Stein said. Chop that set up into 3 fractions, and any of the 3 could make an argument as set of 1999. All by itself...it's a Frankenstein's monster. On tape, of course.

To (finally) get to your observation, in that I called it "overrated"...well, from my standpoint, *of course* it's overrated. It's ranked as the best show on Phish.net and probably by a sizable chunk of Phish's fandom, and by a healthy margin ahead of 12/31/95 (another show I find overrated, but that's another story). I mentioned in the "underrated 2012 show" thread that underrated doesn't just have to mean good show everyone thinks isn't that good, but can also mean great show everyone thinks is just good. And the inverse works as well - an overrated show doesn't have to be a bad show everyone thinks sucks, but can also be a darn good show everyone thinks is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

The last paragraph of your post couldn't have been said better by anybody else. If you were at Cypress, that's your favorite show ever (most likely), and I wouldn't dare to argue against that. If it's your favorite show *on tape*, I wouldn't want to change your mind. As for myself, a Phish fan that has nothing but the utmost respect for Phish's long and storied history and all the fans that have followed them for decades plus and have forgotten more about their shows than I know and have attended any number of classic shows, a Phish fan that can only build my own understanding of and love for the band based on my own previous experiences and what I myself consider to be an optimal Phish show on tape? It's not my pick for the best show ever, and not even close.

@ProfPhan said:

Sure, better than last year's MSG run but I don't think they hang with the highlights of this past summer.

The Dick's run was an embarrassment of riches, and the Cincy Twist and the SPAC Sally and Piper were all-time great jams.

Don't think we got anything that is top 10 2012 out this run.

Any thoughts?

DWD (multi-galactic space excursion) and Carini (the vortex predator cometh) from 12/30, as well as Wolfman's Drummer Boy Brother 12/28 (spine-tingling euphoria), were mighty special.

@dscott said:

@ProfPhan said:

Sure, better than last year's MSG run but I don't think they hang with the highlights of this past summer.

The Dick's run was an embarrassment of riches, and the Cincy Twist and the SPAC Sally and Piper were all-time great jams.

Don't think we got anything that is top 10 2012 out this run.

Any thoughts?

DWD (multi-galactic space excursion) and Carini (the vortex predator cometh) from 12/30, as well as Wolfman's Drummer Boy Brother 12/28 (spine-tingling euphoria), were mighty special.

I would certainly add the Tweezer from 12/28 to that as well.

@MiguelSanchez said:

@nOOb100
I actually agree with a lot of what you are saying. I have said it on this forum before, but i also think it is overrated. Generally speaking, i'm not a big fan of phish's sound in december '99. i think the music at cypress is good, but i don't think it is the "best ever," which is generally assumed within the phish community. i won't go on too long.

if you want my thoughts on this, you can search the thread "is big cypress overrated." i think that was the name of that oldie...

Yeah, I remember we both agreed on that in another thread. I meant to include you in my above post, sorry about that.

Great post, @n00b100. Thanks!

Im glad you took the time to explain your stance on Cypress. good stuff in there. Youre definitely a sharp young man.

Thanks, guys, especially @Slothberries. I hold all you guys in the utmost respect. Even Giants fans.

@n00b100 said:

Thanks, guys, especially @Slothberries. I hold all you guys in the utmost respect. Even Giants fans.

Im actually not a giants fan. Ive been meaning to change that Damned coughlin avatar.

/betting avatar changes on niners/giants games

didnt read much of of this thread, but I tried to read the longest post, but I had to stop reading when @n00b100 didnt included the 9-29-1999 2001 on his list of jams of the year

@n00b100 said:

I tend to gravitate towards sets that feel like one piece of music, in which every song blends together into one whole statement, like there was no other way that set could have gone except for the way that it did.

This is a pretty accurate statement of what I'm looking for.

Excellent post, overall. I pretty much agree with everything you said.

though people throw some hate towards the waves i got a kick out of it ending into Caspian. Underwater to floating on the waves, i got a geek out of that. i was expecting a monster Caspian due to that but i was a little let down, and jams out of Caspian might be up their with my favorites, so pretty. i think the set was make or break here unfortunately i believe they missed a golden chance for something special. they were really building a neat atmosphere.