Wow. Ok, first off @AsWeGoSlidingBy thanks, I'm actually kind of flattered. But the best stuff I think comes out in the interchange of perspectives so @FACTSAREUSELESS thank you for your side of it, which has got me thinking as well. @AsWeGoSlidingBy hey whatever gets you on here getting your thoughts out!! It would have happened eventually but I'm glad we could play some small part in your expressing yourself. I was a lurker from 97-2010 if that gives you some idea. As to your idea, I am in full agreement. There's always a tension between the weight of one's past, what people want you to be, and the stark reality of people's (or bands', or artists') identity unfolding over time. That changing is the seed of creativity and just a fact of life, though it's amazing how often we forget that.

I don't want to get off on an existentialist tangent here, but there is a kind of battle going on between expectations and the freedom to change. Every new era there's some backlash--"man this isn't the band I came to see" or "this just isn't my kind of Phish any more"...etc, whether it's in 97 and people want 94, 98 to 97, 2003 to 94-2000. It's a kind of backward thinking that pegs down the band in a very narrow way. In a sense it's a kind of attempt to dominate the band by delimiting their very identity, I know what they should be and anything else is not who they are.

@FACTSAREUSELESS I think this fits in with your point about expectations. I do however, think it would be almost inhumanly impossible to be able to go into it without any expectations, though perhaps that's my jadedness coming out. Having some sense of knowing the band, and thus being a part of this community, but without letting that absolutely determine what the band can be seems to be the ideal. In this sense, history can be a good thing because it provides clues and direction about what is going on in the present, so long as we remember that once an era is over no amount of nostalgic idealism is going to resurrect it. In this sense, we'd be able to talk about this stuff we've been talking about (historical styles of jamming) without going into things expecting and demanding naively a kind of repetition.

As for the dead comparison, I'm just going to say this because it is what I believe but it will probably piss a lot of people off. Now, as a caveat I love Phish songs (just the songs) more than any other band outside of maybe Floyd and the Dead. But the Dead's catalogue of songs I just feel lends itself to a kind of timelessness where we can hear a Wharf Rat from any era and just let it envelope us without concern for the next jam. Part of this is that the Dead are over with, there is no new ground being broken so we can accept it for what it is without this expectational side of things. Yet, personally, I feel that there is a kind of magic in the Dead's compositions that doesn't depend on how they play the songs. A straightforward reading of Uncle John's will *always* get me going and if they jam it then that's just a bonus. Maybe if I weren't 8 years old in 1989 I would have been jonesin for that 12 minute jammed Uncle John's back then, who knows. But as it stands now I think the Dead's songs and the emotive power of Jerry just let the songs themselves be satisfying in a way Phish can't touch (and Phish isn't trying to!!)--the lyricism is just unrivaled. I don't want to get to flaky here but it is as if there is some kind of aura to the songs that portray timeless truths with pure emotion, the lyrics and the performance. So if I put on Winterland '73 I know there's going to be some deeply psychedelic stuff to come, but I'm still enjoying the shit out of To Lay Me Down and Sugaree, eyes closed in a trance as much as in Dark Star.

So I think it may be an unfair comparison because Phish songs (just the songs) depend more on how they are played. With some exceptions (H2 comes to mind), Phish needs to play their songs *well* in order for me to enjoy an AC/DC Bag. Not jammed at all necessarily but with the standard amount of heat that we had become accustomed to in earlier years. I know I may be contradicting myself, but I think excellent standard playing is something that we have an (ugh) right to expect from Phish that allows the catalogue to come alive. I know we have to accept that they are changing but this does not mean (and I think should not mean) that we accept whatever changes occur. This area is one of the few where objective standards can be applied to how well they are playing their songs. If they're still playing songs that demand perfection in playing due to their compositions, then part of what makes that song successful, built into the song itself, is nailing the prog side of it. I think the band themselves are slowly coming to face this problematic--they are not the band they were when they wrote these things and have very different lives and concerns about their music.

So anyway, I think that may be part of why people are so jam oriented with Phish. With normal songs you have perfectly nailed execution and energy, or you have jamming on them. Phish, have to say it, is rarely getting people off on the former so they go looking for the latter. A ho-hum 96 first set with NO jamming is still technically played better than a jam-less first set these days. Again, I think it's about the impossibility of completely letting go of expectations--but the dark side to that is that Trey can be 'pissing in people's ears' and we'd all cheer him for doing so if we don't have ANY expectations. I think we could maybe separate what they've done from the past and still use some objective determining factors about the songs themselves in terms of execution. A botched note is a botched note. That said, we can hope without expecting.

Caveat: they seem to be much tighter the start of this tour than the start of summer tour, which is a good sign.