Following a beautiful weekend at the Gorge, Phish and many of their rabid fans followed the lines going south to The City by the Bay to see the band take the stage at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium for the tenth time in the past four years. Last summer, the band skipped a three night run at BGCA for the first time since 2012, in favor of a single show at Shoreline – a move that ended up paying off big time. The crowd assembled outside the venue and City Hall early on Monday, and the party blazed on into the night. Unlike the 2014 weekday run, there was not an abundance of extras on “Shakedown” – there were more fingers in the air than there were tickets.

At 8:07 PM, the band took the stage to a raucous applause from the fans, and Page started off the festivities with a sample: “You have been selected...”. The band wasted no time blasting off into “Martian Monster,” opening a show for the third time ever and played for the fourth time in sixteen shows this tour. The trip was relatively short, but definitely sweet, and when we disembarked, Mike greeted us in the native tongue with a “Bee Chew Ba Ba Bajingo” as the band continued the spacey theme with “Halley’s Comet.” Like most renditions of late, this version was well-played and completely inside the box. And for the fifth time in “3.0,” “Halley’s” careened (in-key) into “46 Days.” As the first jam developed, Trey found a gnarly tone that he paired nicely with an ascending riff that signaled to his bandmates and the crowd that a peak was coming. After settling into the vocal coda, Trey immediately catapulted the band back into the stratosphere for another sharp peak before winding down again and taking a short breather after an energetic start to the set.

Photo by Dave Vann © Phish, used with permission

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