As we wind down Leg Two, it's really turning out to be a sort of winding-down (at least so far): things started off mega-hot in Red Rocks, continued to peak at the Gorge, but everything since has been not quite as good (while still managing to be largely better than all but a handful of Leg One shows, admittedly). Comcast manages to be the best show since the Gorge by virtue of its well-roundedness; however, the one thing that keeps it from being a truly excellent Phish show in the vein of, say, Camden or Gorge I is a lack of any deep improvisation to speak of.
Let's get this out of the way first: in the way of much of Leg Two, the first set is easily the best of the two. "Punch You in the Eye" is played with great momentum, and it rolls right into a "Bag" > "NICU" that features a great Trey solo (in "Bag"). Then we get some more old-school setlist choices that, in retrospect, should have clued me in to the fact that this was going to be a well-played but non-improv show. "Forbin's" > "Mockingbird" is gorgeously played, and there's a nice, early-90s-sounding melodic jam in "Mockingbird" that I salivated over a little bit.
"Birds" is next, and it takes a left turn right away, leading into some weird, whale-y territory for Trey, a bit of minimal soloing that's supported by Mike underneath. The move from this into "Lawn Boy" is somehow made to seem natural (I'm realizing more and more how important pacing is in first set song placement), and then the improvisational highlight of the show comes up in "Stash." Like "Birds" before it, things get interesting almost right away here as the jam kicks off, with a sinister tone and some tension-y playing from Trey that eventually transitions into a droning section at 11:00, which Page sprinkles some melodic piano over. This jam doesn't necessarily stand up to any of the juggernauts of Leg Two in terms of quality, but it's easily the most cohesive piece of the night.
And excellently played and excellently paced first set ends up with a well-placed "I Didn't Know" with vacuum antics, then another take on Mike's "Middle of the Road," and finally a down-and-dirty "Zero."
It seems like the boys originally wanted the second set to be improv-heavy, but none of the jams seemed to really cohere around anything interesting. They start off with "Disease," which stays firmly in type 1 territory until the 9:00 mark, when it switches to the standard funk-strumming springboard they've been using to start really jamming from for a lot of Leg Two, now. They just sort of circle the runway for awhile in this mode, though, never really finding anything to land on until 11:00, when things open up briefly into a mini-bliss jam. The "official" Phish.net setlist notes a "'Reba' jam" here, but I'm just not hearing it. Nothing really coalesces and Trey finally blessedly ripcords the thing into a standard "Wilson."
"Wilson" features an ambient-noise segue into a surprisingly rock-and-roll "Slave," which has a much more drawn out peak than most recent versions, then we move on to "Piper," which seems to be the second attempt of the set to build a really interesting soundscape. It works a bit better than "Disease" did, but not by much. At about the 4:00 mark, the band switches into that funk-strumming springboard again (the same one they just used in "Disease") seemingly trying to get something interesting started. At 7:30, Trey finds an interesting, minimalistic soloing space inside of Fishman's fast-but-light drumming, but abandons it way too soon, opting instead for a few more minutes of standard soloing action before the final minute of the song, which actually features a really interesting, percussion-less (as far as I could tell) abstract space constructed primarily of Page's crawling organ work and Mike's sinister-as-hell bass tone. This is another one of those jams where I feel like it has enough interesting moments that it's likely a highlight on someone's list, especially with the weird, abstract close, but for me it sounded more like the band just casting around trying to find a good idea an mostly failing for about 12 of the song's 13 minutes.
They come out of the abstract space, though, with a perfect Page-led segue into "Water in the Sky," a strange second set choice. Then there's a 10-minute "Ghost," but this "Ghost" is just type 1 shredding action, and really just serves as a springboard for a great segue into "Psycho Killer." "Psycho Killer" features a "jam" section that's basically just abstract electronic noise from what sounds like Trey's pedal board, and this leads to some antics in which Trey seemingly tries to get the crowd to dance to this incredibly undanceable music, and then begins singing the lyrics to "Catapult" over the noise. This moves next into an "Icculus" that has Trey jokingly berating the crowd for never reading books anymore because they're obsessed with electronics and explaining how he was alive for the creation of "Pong," which prompts a callback to the noise loop shenanigans ("This is what 'Pong' sounded like"). To close out the set, there's a short(ish) but smooth and fast "YEM" that includes the "Pong" "jam" in the vocal section.
You can see most of this run of songs starting here, but you'll have to click into YouTube directly to find parts 2 and 3 of the video, for some reason:
All in all, it seems like the guys just couldn't get on the same page when it came to extended jamming for this show; however, it features a really well-paced first set with some excellent song choices and a great few minutes in the "Stash" jam. The second set is better off when they give up on the long jams and just settle into the antics (everything after the segue into "Psycho Killer" is just good old Phishy fun), and the running joke with the "Pong" sound effects is consistently funny and clever. This seems like it would have been a great show to be at, and though the effect is a little lost over the tape, it's still a good time, if you're into fun antics and good song selection, and don't absolutely need a show to "go deep" to enjoy it.
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