Penn State on a Thursday night had to be rowdy time, much more so than the previous show in sleepy Lake Placid on a Wednesday night! This set gets started off with super high energy!

SET 1: Also Sprach Zarathustra: Roof had to be blown off I imagine with this one, just the second show of the tour, Clifford Ball barely in the review mirror and Thursday night on a huge college campus? BRING IT ON!!! >

Funky Bitch, Sparkle > This combo is rocking and rolling and ratchets up the energy even more.

Tweezer: Tweezer in the show’s first quarter! Wow! This certainly bodes well. For whatever reason, the band wasn’t looking to extend this one basically at all, wonder when the last Tweezer was under ten minutes? >

Theme From the Bottom, Talk: Solid.

Punch You in the Eye, Character Zero, A Day in the Life, Tweezer Reprise: I love, love, love the placement on all of this. All fairly non-traditional in that each one of these tunes has largely been an opener, closer, or an encore and yet each do not get pigeonholed in their typical places. Well done!

First set summary: Nothing groundbreaking. At all. BUT! This is a rock solid first set of Phish – the flow, setlist construction and energy are all perfect and have us set up for a killer set two. Hopefully!

SET 2: Ya Mar: Standard.

Chalk Dust Torture: Face melter!

Bathtub Gin: Good micro-jam but it is ended out of nowhere, not sure who rip corded that one.

Scent of a Mule: Frampton style talk box prominently used here as is common in the era, is that the right terminology? Quite the crowd clap along.

Free: Standard, Trey on percussion rack.

The Lizards: Ever so slightly you can barely hear Trey singing along to his guitar parts during Page’s solo. Trey’s solo starts off so quiet and tender – for the most part the crowd accommodates this and is quiet along with it! Trey crushes his solo and the outro vocals are brilliant. Perfect version!

The Star-Spangled Banner: Debut! Trey lets the crowd know they got a call from the LA Lakers a couple of weeks ago and that they wanted Phish to sing this before a Lakers game. So, they accepted and but of course they want to try it out on us first! I have huge goosebumps as I type this and listen to this, the crowd goes absolutely bonkers over this. Brand new Bryce Jordan must have been shaken to its core.

David Bowie: This one has a hard edge to it, Trey’s tone sounds so good, complimented nicely by Page. The band begins building tension in the late 9’s, things get loud and chaotic, Page is POUNDING that baby grand. First peak hits at 11:11 but is brief, second peak hits at 11:43 and is also brief. THE peak hits at 12:25 and is clean and as ferocious as you would expect. This is a rock solid, early tour version of David Bowie. An unheralded version with replay value, for sure.

ENCORE: Golgi Apparatus – Standard.

Second set summary: Unfortunately, a groundbreaking night was not in the cards – for whatever reason. Still, over the years I have always appreciated this show and feel it is rated lower than it deserves. Currently, it is rated as 3.286/5 (49 ratings). I would rate this show as a 3.6 out of 5. I would love to rate it higher than that for all the reasons I stated in my first set summary but outside of the Bowie, it doesn’t have anything that gets out there at all. Everything is played safely. But guess what fans?! Pittsburgh LOOMS!!!