@mikh2wg said:

You asked me the other day if I thought Phish really was moving forward these days, and I think this Portsmouth show might be my answer to you. I think Phish is moving forward emotionally. They are more willing to bring real heart and emotion and pain onto the stage than they were in the past. Thunder Road is a good example. Watching Trey squeeze his eyes shut and sing that gave me the feeling that I was watching something really personal. It was like when you're at a party and a guy picks up a guitar and goes off into a corner to play. You can see that what he's doing has a lot of meaning to him. He misses a few chord changes, but you can hear the emotion in his every note.

I saw David Bowie play in 2004 and I was blown away by his ability to live inside the words of every single song he sang. He sang each lyric like it was a revelation coming to him for the first time. I hope this is what Phish wants to move toward. And I think the songwriting of 3.0 reflects it. There are more lyrics about real pain and love than ever before. "Summer of '89," and "Number Line" are particularly poignant. "Stealing Time from the Faulty Plan" is a very dark and honest look at addiction.

So how cool would it be if Phish could make you dance and laugh and blow your mind with jams and make you tear up a little bit too? Can't wait to see what happens next!

Please don't mistake me for a 3.0-hater as I'm not. But Phish regularly improvised with incredible emotion in 1997 and 1998, and even sporadically into 2000. There is raw, naked pathos in jams like the 11/21/97 Ghost -> Bag; the following night's Halley's; Lemonwheel IV; the 10/30/98 "Ring of Fire" jam out of NICU and leading into Caspian; the 10/31/98 Wolfman's; the 1/1/00 Roses; etc. If you like your Phish harmonically unleashed and with emotional overtones that range anywhere between bittersweet and desperate, check some of those out.