This review really tears me up. I think I actually agree with you in tone and in spirit, but I disagree on the facts of the show.

I thought Set I up to the weather break was outstanding, as good as any so far this tour, better than many. I thought the Jim was as interesting as Bethel's, or almost so. The Timber (Jerry) was really very strong (as you note). The other songs in the set were as tight as you could want and flowed together as a set of music quite nicely.

The return set of "greatest hits" probably does deserve some of the stick it's getting. But I'm not hearing anyone saying "x" really killed the energy, one of the top complaints about second sets heretofore. That can't be an accident. There was definitely a conscious decision to keep a high energy level after the storm break. That affected the songs called, clearly. I don't think it was a bad decision. You call these songs interchangeable -- I disagree. Julius, far from feeling "tossed-off," easily beats the others we've gotten recently. It absolutely smoked. I think you've underrated the Bowie as well.

The main beef seems to be with the relative absence of experimentation, outside jamming, Type II. And that's where you've got a point. There wasn't a whole lot of that in evidence last night. The question is, can there be an above-average Phish show without it? I think that there can be and I think this show brought it. My only complaints about this show are the mis-steps in the end of Suzy and in the a cappella numbers, both of which problems I thought were mitigated by other factors: the fact that Page killed Suzy outright (Fish knew!) and that the Birdwatcher/Kung was sidesplitting.

I had thought before this morning that Camden would go down as the underrated show of the tour. Now I know it's Alpharetta 2.