This show is more important for historical value than for it's musical merit. For those of you who don't know, I'll explain. Phish was recording Billy Breathes in (or near, I'm not sure) the town of Woodstock, NY. To thank the town for hosting them, they gave a surprise show at the Joyous Lake, a local bar, playing under the name of Third Ball. (To those of you who are reading this, "Third Ball" is a secret agenda message relating to Fish's lower regions. If you have read this, you know too much and will be sought out and killed.) At the show, Character Zero and the nameless and endingless Waste were debuted.
Stash is the fifth song in the second set, between Sparkle and the first ever Waste.
Start is at the nice and orderly time of 0:00. Everyone is nice and clear on this rare SBD. No flubs. Some in-the-know fans must have heard about this show ahead of time (I think it was rumored the day before on the ng) because there are quite a few people clapping at the appropriate time. Trey misses a note at 1:07.
First verse at 1:35. The Climb starts at 2:11, well executed. Page is nice and loud, providing some rolls up and down the piano. The Climb ends at 3:06, and the second verse starts at 3:49, and we are into the jam at 4:49. Trey is doing some normal beginning-of-jam noodling and MSMN is faded out at 5:25.
Nice Guitar-Piano interwork at 5:45. Page is so prominent around 6:00 that he's almost interfering with Trey's soloing, but he backs down around 6:10. At 6:19, Trey starts a rising theme that Page immediatly picks up on, shortly followed by the rest of the band. They are all playing the exact same pattern so perfectly that it's amazing that it wasn't composed. This ends at 6:28, and Trey busts back into normal Stash jamming, although Page toys around with the ascending theme again around 6:43.
Trey is getting higher on the 'doc now, with Fish providing some interesting snare accentation at 7:06. Fish continues with this, and at 7:19 Trey is playing a very basic three-note theme, Page has a different three-note theme, and Fish is still accenting. It interlocks perfectly. It gets manic at 7:25, and ends at 7:29. Nice and loud at 7:35. Page is all over the keys at 8:05, and at 8:09 Trey jumps and octave and hits one of those trademark high notes, the Stash equivalent of a gear shift. He stays up high and is roaring at 8:18. 8:23-tension is building, with Page hitting random notes and getting more atonal. Tension builds.. and builds.. and is released at 8:36, but with a low note rather than high. The jam is still building.
Trey is ascending the fretboard with a chromatic scale at 8:50 as a tension builder. Release at 8:56 with Page helping the release of tension by doing repeated rolls up and down the piano. Trey is still holding the same note at 9:05, but Page is building tension with dischordant chords (Sounds like an oxymoron!). Trey FINALLY releases the note at 9:10. Back to typical stash jamming at 9:17. Page is everywhere. Tension is built and built, and then all of a sudden Starts playing the MSMN theme at 9:57 without releasing the tension, very ineffective. Singing at 10:00. Trey misses a few notes here. From 10:10 to 10:15 Trey plays a lick out of nowhere. This might've been a seriously botched version of the ending lick because the singing had stopped. The ending is correctly executed immediately afterwards for a final time of 10:20.