The Verdict:
Instead of thinking of it as a one-two punch, think of the Alpharetta run as a one-two light-tap-on-the-shoulder. There's not much going on here in general, but on a scale of "Boring" to "Super Boring," I'd put night one slightly below night two.
As usual for 2011 so far, the setlist is actually pretty great. A "Dinner and a Movie" opener, a nicely-placed "Cities," and a surprising "Light Up Or Leave Me Alone" are among the high points of the first set. But also as usual for 2011 so far, none of these tunes really ascend to anything other than well played but rote versions.
The trend continues into the second set. Typically, a set that began with "Carini" > "Sand" > "Disease" -> "Maze" would be a monster, but here "Carini" is five minutes long, "Sand" spends its entire running time as a Trey-soloing vehicle, and "Disease" only manages to break out of the box for three or so minutes of 2009-derivative space jamming. And that's it. The rest of the set goes exactly how it looks on paper.
The Live Review:
6/14/11: Dinner and a Movie opener. Lots of evil Fish screaming already.
6/14/11: > Moma.
6/14/11: Possum is third and features a hilariously fast and baroque-sounding solo peak.
6/14/11: Mixing things up a bit with Cities.
6/14/11: Page on electric piano. Mellow jam developing.
6/14/11: Short jam followed by another early-show Fluffhead.
6/14/11: Trey going to back to a bit of that ol' Van Halen action during his Ocelot solo.
6/14/11: Ginseng Sullivan!
6/14/11: KDF is next in what's turning out to be an even-more-straightforward-than-usual set.
6/14/11: Pretty standard Type I Gin follows.
6/14/11: Light Up Or Leave Me Alone injects a little bit of excitement into the setlist.
6/14/11: Hot Trey solo at the end of Light Up, goes right into Cavern. Maybe end set?
6/14/11: It is. S2 starts off with Carini.
6/14/11: Super-short Carini, but a droning outro sets up a long segue into Sand.
6/14/11: That then falls flat anyway and requires a full band restart before > Sand.
6/14/11: Standard Sand crashes into the fuzz of the Disease intro.
6/14/11: Going for a very 2009 space-funk vibe in the Disease jam.
6/14/11: Evil, ambient weirdness now.
6/14/11: After a brief noise jam, a nice segue into Maze. Page is taking this version over on organ.
6/14/11: MOESTAAAACK
6/14/11: Meatstick lands in 2001.
6/14/11: Despite a few shining 2001s lately, that one was played pretty straight. > Bug.
6/14/11: Trey just shredded that Bug, as if it was the exclamation point on a great show. Which it wasn't.
6/14/11: Nice little piano-only segue from Bug into A Day in the Life, though.
6/14/11: Still totally weirds me out when a S2 ends with Antelope.
6/14/11: Quinn the Eskimo encore.
6/14/11: And that was pretty much the most uninteresting Phish show I've listened to so far in 2011. Maybe I'm just worn out.
6/14/11: No real interesting song choices in S1 except Light Up. Nothing interesting happening in the rest of the S1 tunes.
6/14/11: No surprises at all in S2. Carini blows a Sand transition and abandons what might have been a jam.
6/14/11: Disease has about 2 minutes of 2009-derivative jamming and 2 minutes of ambient space, and then we're back to S1 playing.
6/14/11: I mean, hey, it's a Phish show, and most days I'd rather listen to Phish than any other music.
6/14/11: But it's been 8 shows since I've heard any improv of note, and only 4 of the 15 2011 shows so far have been at all interesting.
6/14/11: So I guess I'm getting a little bored.
6/14/11: 6/15 has a 3.1 rating, so I don't imagine things are going to get better any time soon.
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