The Verdict:
Same old, same old is the verdict here. The epic Greek run is starting to look more and more like a weird anomaly in a summer that's skewed almost entirely toward shows that feature consistently sky-high energy and great setlists, but have second sets that are almost indistinguishable from first sets. In other words, if Phish was a rock and roll bar band, summer 2010 would be a banner year. If you care about improv at all, though, pickings have been pretty slim.
I don't know if there's anything particularly bad about the Noblesville run in this regard, or if I'm just getting frustrated and this was a convenient peak, but...blargh. Night one's first set is par for the course: "Cars Trucks Buses" gets extended slightly past its usual running time, and "Roggae" goes more rock and less melody in its jam, but aside from those changes, you've heard all this before.
The second set makes it through a "Drowned" that recalls "Waiting All Night" in the tail end of its jam, but the first two-thirds of the set is otherwise flat unless you count a clever segue out of "Jibboo" into "Gin." There's no real improv to speak of in the last third of the set, still, but the "Split" is an especially intense version and is the easy highlight of the show, while the "Hood" is nice and languid.
The encore is weird but fun, as Trey strings together the end of "Fee," then "NO2," and then "Kung" with his megaphone's siren before the full band ricochets through a rough version of "Fire" to end the show.
The Live Review:
8/12/10: Jim opener.
8/12/10: Really hot start from Trey in particular on the Jim jam.
8/12/10: PYITE is second.
8/12/10: Man! I totally HATE that 'Hey!' jam with the crowd in PYITE. Totally takes me out of the
moment, man.
8/12/10: /sarcasm
8/12/10: Trey repeats a verse of PYITE then mutters 'Sorry!' quickly in-between lines. That was really hilarious to me, for some reason.
8/12/10: Shit, serious issues all the way around with this PYITE.
8/12/10: Roggae third. Trey is laying down some soaring licks rather than staying in the background.
8/12/10: Not a complaint, just different than how this jam seems to unfold more recently.
8/12/10: 'Intense' is not normally a word that I'd associate with Roggae, but there you go.
8/12/10: Cars Trucks Buses!!
8/12/10: CTB getting extended a little bit with band members trading solos. Trey is putting down a particularly weird one.
8/12/10: Even Sample featured a mistimed drop from Trey. The guys sound surprisingly shaky tonight.
8/12/10: Especially considering how they've been NAILING S1s lately.
8/12/10: Horn is next. Playing might be a little weird, but the guys are at least working their S1 setlist magic as per usual.
8/12/10: Setlist fun continues with Sugar Shack. This one is about a 5.0 on the Trey-Falls-Apart Scale.
8/12/10: Wolfman's Brother is next. Page to the clav right after vocals.
8/12/10: Kind of a plinko feel, now.
8/12/10: At least from everyone but Trey.
8/12/10: Plinko call was a little premature. Standard Wolfman's > TTE.
8/12/10: *Looking askance across table in a dark room* It's been awhile for you and me, TTE.
8/12/10: Everybody sound rusty tonight, for some reason. Must have been a hell of a trip from CO to IN. It usually is, I guess.
8/12/10: Riding home for 'setbreak.' There better be some damn #phish dates by the time I get there :)
8/12/10: Well, there are worse ways to start a second set than with Drowned.
8/12/10: Trey shredding for all he's worth in the first few minutes of this jam.
8/12/10: Sudden tone shift. Page to organ, then electric piano.
8/12/10: Lots of synth now from Page. Shuffling beat from Fish.
8/12/10: Sort of a logical extension of Ye Olde Ambient Fade-Out.
8/12/10: Kind of neat, but no particular direction emerging.
8/12/10: Odd part that sounded weirdly like Waiting All Night there for a minute.
8/12/10: Actually this sounds a hell of a lot like Waiting All Night.
8/12/10: Sudden move into Jibboo. Not sure if I'd call it a ripcord, though, because the jam wasn't really going anywhere.
8/12/10: Page and Trey playing off of each other well in this Jibboo. It's not doing anything beyond Type I, but worth a listen anyway.
8/12/10: Really neat -> Gin. Just as it was starting to sound like Type 2 Jibboo was coming...
8/12/10: ...but I think that might have just been the setup for the Gin.
8/12/10: I call no ripcord.
8/12/10: GREAT rock peak in the Gin jam.
8/12/10: MFMF is next.
8/12/10: Okay, so they not only played Buffalo Bill, they played it in a second set.
8/12/10: Twist is next, and the jam goes mellow almost immediately.
8/12/10: Trey shreds (Twist) again...the template for 'jamming' since the Greek seems to just be starting off Type I mellow...
8/12/10: ...and having Trey just play more and more notes until his guitar ejaculates, > next song.
8/12/10: In this case, the post-coital choice is The Horse.
8/12/10: Sloppy-but-fast Silent > Split.
8/12/10: Especially abstract and weird Split jam. This is the first really interesting thing that's happened since the 8/10 Carini.
8/12/10: Really atypical Type 2 segment now.
8/12/10: Abstract, no sustained rhythm, though Fish is playing.
8/12/10: So weird. Aborted really quickly, though, for a decent -> Dog Faced Boy.
8/12/10: HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD
8/12/10: Really mellow, slow building Hood. More so than usual, I mean.
8/12/10: Peak sort of comes out of nowhere. Solid version, though, in the usual pre-'14 mold.
8/12/10: Or, rather, the pre-Hollywood Hood mold.
8/12/10: Golgi set closer?
8/12/10: Fee for the encore.
8/12/10: Really rough Fee.
8/12/10: So Trey just used the megaphone siren to pull off a -> NO2.
8/12/10: First and only siren-driven segue in #phish history?
8/12/10: Siren still going, end of Fee -> NO2 -> Kung.
8/12/10: So that's fun :)
8/12/10: Fire!
8/12/10: Well, that encore belonged to be paired to a much better show...
8/12/10: *with
8/12/10: Siren again at the end of Fire.
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