Per RFC 2812, PASS is required *before* NICK/USER.

RFC 2812, [section 3.1](http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2812#page-10) explicitly states, and reiterates in 3.1.1, that of NICK, USER, and PASS, PASS _can't_ be last, and it's recommended that it be first.

I ran into this because it breaks at least on Freenode.