From: Matt Laurence <mlaurenc@world.std.com>
Subject: Wow...!
Reply-To: mlaurenc@world.std.com
Organization: The Internet
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 07:40:48 GMT


There I was... front row balcony, right of stage, and they start
into David Bowie... could have been maze, those two always confuse
me right at the start... but as Rich and an eagerly awaiting
Springfield crowd and I all listened, Trey and Mike started 
doing something that sounded familiar; couldn't quite place it.
Maybe A Night In Tunesia, which would have been exciting. But I
was NOT prepared for the surprise they dished out... out of te
David Bowie tease into TIMBER HO! (or is it Timber Roll, I was
never sure if that was settled). Yeah, it's been a good three
years since they've played that one, and I'd never seen it 
live, so I was a VERY happy camper to finally hear it. I thiink
it was completely sppontaneoous; at least Shelly said that Page
was surprised by it! Hmmm, perhaps I  should drop the setlists
before going any further:

Springfield Symphony Hall, 12/30/92
Set 1:
Landlady
Sparkle
Split Open
Essther
Chalkdust
Fluffhead
Paul and Silas
Reba ->
I Walk The Line ->
End of Reba
I Didn't Know ->
Trombone ->
I Didn't Know
Bowierhytthm ->
TIMBER HO! ->
Bowie

Set 2:
Axilla
Rift
Bathtub Gin
YEM ->
Auld Lang Syne (a day early...) ->
YEM/vocal jam
TMWSIY ->
Avenu ->
TMWSIYY
Possum
Big Ball Jam (just Trey, Miike and Page) ->
Honey Love Ya
A-Train
Llama

Encore:
Mystery Ship
Adeline

Please excuse my typing - it's late and I have two mangle fingers
so I'm missing letters every now and then (see?). First sett was
fairly plain up until Fluffhead, which was  a lovely one... during
the Clod section, Trey slowly faded in and out on a single, whiny
distorted notee and reared his head up with each crescendo - it
reminded me of some strange, slow-motion dinosaur wailing... hmmm.
Paul and Silas was a nice addition, and Reba was good, but there
wer quite a few little screwups (such as Fishman missing the
climactic ending and playing on after everyone else had stopped - 
they then RE-finished the solo section soi he could get it right),
but they did I Walk The Line before going into the whistling.
Timber Ho! was great, but iit's a very hard-jamming song, and I think
it lost a few people (there were a lot of first-timers there, ffrom
what I could tell). But a great Bowie ended the fairly long set
(12 songs, including Reba, Flluff  and Bowwie, as well as Esther.
Rich and I had a great view of everything from  our sky seats 
overlooking the sttage (got a brand new perspective on Fishman's
playing), but the sound was only metza-metza, so we moved down
to the front row for the second set.

Between sets an excellent hammered Dulcimer player performed for
about 15 minutes, then the real set break came. The front row was
surprisingly friendly and open compared to places like 
Port Chester, and the security made a lot of noise but wasn't 
really that harsh. Secon set was very tight, startingg right off
with Axilla and a really nicee Gin. The Mystery Ship encore,
however, was my favorite moment of the second half, since I
had never seen them do that either, and it's another oldie for
them (fairly rare too - I've only seen it on two or three tapes).

All in alll an excellent show... I can only DREAM about what 
they'll spring on us tomorrow!

In fact, I'll go do that right now.

Matt
Newsgroups: rec.music.phish